Broadband Power-Reconfigurable Nonuniform Distributed Amplifier Using the Gate-Short Method

초록

A broadband power-reconfigurable distributed amplifier (PRDA) is proposed and implemented in a monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) using a commercial 150 nm gallium arsenide pseudomorphic high electron mobility transistor (pHEMT) process. A gate-short method (GSM) is proposed in the gain cell of triple-stacked transistors to achieve high efficiency in the low-power mode (LPM), and a nonuniform design is adopted to enhance power reconfigurability over ultra-wide bandwidth from 1 to 40 GHz. The bandwidth of the PRDA is improved by adding a feedback capacitor inside the gain cell. The fabricated PRDA MMIC obtains a linear gain of 10.0-15.6 dB from 1 to 46GHz and an output power of 19.5-28.1 dBm from 1 to 40GHz. The measured drain efficiency (DE) is 4.6%-38.7% from 1 to 40 GHz. The proposed circuit shows a power back-off of more than 2.8 dB at 1-40 GHz in LPM and a small DE degradation less than 8.7% compared to high power mode. Furthermore, the proposed PRDA enables optimum DE according to the back-off power across the octave bandwidth by controlling the gate supply voltages of GSM gain cells. In addition, the proposed PRDA demonstrates high-order modulation capability using a 5G NR signal, achieving low EVM values on the order of 3%-4% across sub-6 GHz and mmWave frequencies.

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