Journal of Xidian University

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Design of a 2.5~14.5GHz distributed power amplifier

ZHANG Ying1,2,3;MA Kaixue3;ZHANG Yi1,2;ZHANG Changchun1,2;ZHOU Hongmin2   

  1. (1. National and Local Joint Engineering Lab. of RF Integration and Micro-assembly Technology, Nanjing Univ. of Posts and Telecommunications, Nanjing 210046, China;
    2. School of Electronic Science & Engineering, Nanjing Univ. of Posts and Telecommunications, Nanjing 210046, China;
    3. School of Physical Electronics, Univ. of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, China)
  • Received:2017-01-12 Online:2018-02-20 Published:2018-03-23

Abstract:

The operation principle of distributed amplifiers and the impedance characteristic of artificial transmission lines (ATLs) are analyzed, and a distributed power amplifier consisting of three gain cells is designed and fabricated by 0.18μm complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology. The peaking inductor is used to enhance the gain and the reverse isolation of the amplifier in high frequency. The termination loads of ATLs are increased and the values of on-chip inductors are optimized to provide good impedance matching, while improving the output power and efficiency. Measured results show that the amplifier has a 3dB bandwidth of 12GHz (2.5~14.5GHz) and provides an average forward gain of 9.8dB from 3 to 14GHz with a gain flatness of ±1dB. In the desired band, the output power at 1dB gain compression point (P1dB) is from 4.3 to 10.3dBm while the power added efficiency (PAE) is from 1.7% to 6.9%.

Key words: distributed amplifier, artificial transmission line, impedance matching, power added efficiency, peaking inductor