A high efficiency Ka-band monolithic GaAs FET amplifier

Abstract
A monolithic three-stage Ka-band GaAs FET power amplifier has been designed and fabricated on MBE (molecular-beam epitaxy)-grown material with a highly doped (8*10/sup 17/ cm/sup -3/) channel. Devices with gate length of 0.25 mu m and gate width of 50 mu m, 100 mu m, and 250 mu m were cascaded. The gate and drain bias networks were also integrated. A maximum small-signal gain of 26 dB was obtained with 4 V on the drain and 0 V on the gate. When biased for large-signal operation, the amplifier was capable of generating 112 mW output power with 16-dB gain and 21.6% power-added efficiency at 34 GHz. It is believed that this is a record efficiency for a GaAs MMIC (microwave monolithic integrated circuit) amplifier at this frequency.

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