A CMOS reconfigurable distributed amplifier employing large-signal MGTR technique

This letter presents a reconfigurable CMOS distributed amplifier (DA) employing a large-signal (LS) multigated transistor (MGTR) topology for high efficiency and linearity. With separated gate bias voltage of gain cells, the DA can be reconfigurable to work at normal-gain (NG) mode and high-efficiency (HE) mode. The gradually changed artificial transmission line (ATL) connected to the output port is designed to increase the output power while maintaining good output impedance matching. At NG mode, the DA achieves an average forward gain of 11.8 dB from 1.6 to 17.8 GHz, while providing the output power at 1 dB output compression point (OP1 dB) of 5.8-9.64 dBm with the power added efficiency (PAE) of 2.2%-5.2% for frequencies 3-16 GHz. At HE mode, the DA has an average forward gain of 7.6 dB over 1-18.8 GHz, and achieves the OP1dB of 6.9-9.65 dBm with the high PAE of 6.6%-10.8% for frequencies 3-16 GHz.