A 4.2-to-5.4 GHz stacked GaAs HBT power amplifier for C-band applications

Abstract

Purpose

Power amplifiers (PAs) play an important role in wireless communications because they dominate system performance. High-linearity broadband PAs are of great value for potential use in multi-band system implementation. The purpose of this paper is to present a cascode power amplifier architecture to achieve high power and high efficiency requirements for 4.2∼5.4 GHz applications.

Design/methodology/approach

A common emitter (CE) configuration with a stacked common base configuration of heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) is used to achieve high power. T-type matching network is used as input matching network. To increase the bandwidth, the output matching networks are implemented using the two L-networks.

Findings

By using the proposed method, the stacked PA demonstrates a maximum saturated output power of 26.2 dBm, a compact chip size of 1.17 × 0.59 mm² and a maximum power-added efficiency of 46.3 per cent. The PA shows a wideband small signal gain with less than 3 dB variation over working frequency. The saturated output power of the proposed PA is higher than 25 dBm between 4.2 and 5.4 GHz.

Originality/value

The technology adopted for the design of the 4.2-to-5.4 GHz stacked PA is the 2-µm gallium arsenide HBT process. Based on the proposed method, a better power performance of 3 dB improvement can be achieved as compared with the conventional CE or common-source amplifier because of high output stacking impedance.

Citation

Liu, M., Xu, P., Zhang, J., Liu, B. and Zhang, L. (2020), "A 4.2-to-5.4 GHz stacked GaAs HBT power amplifier for C-band applications", Circuit World, Vol. 46 No. 4, pp. 243-248. https://doi.org/10.1108/CW-05-2019-0046