A Millimeter-wave Ultra-Wideband Non-Uniform Distributed Power Amplifier with Improved Efficiency

Conventional millimeter-wave ultra-wideband distributed power amplifiers (DPAs) are usually difficult to achieve high efficiency in the whole band. In this paper, a 9-40GHz non-uniform distributed power amplifiers (NDPA) with improved power added efficiency (PAE) is presented. In order to improve the efficiency, an inductance (L) is paralleled at the drain of transistor, which can form a parallel resonant circuit with drain-source capacitance (Cds). And by adjusting this L-Cds resonant frequency, the cut-off frequency of the drain-line can be optimized, which in turn can reduce the loss of drain line and improve the PAE of NDPA. By using method, the PAE of NDPA at millimeter wave band can be improved and a 1W Microwave monolithic integrated circuit (MMIC) with 11-19% PAE over 9-40GHz is realized based on 0.1 mu m AlGaN/GaN DHFET on Silicon (Si) technology.