DC to 67 GHz GaAs MIMIC Simplifies Broadband Designs

摘要

Broadband system designers are constantly pushing the envelope to get better performance, whether the design is a state-of-the-art microwave instrument or a robust electronic warfare (EW) system. The demand for consistently better performance across the required band makes the design task difficult, and the continued expansion of bandwidth only exacerbates the challenge. Not long ago, EW systems focused on DC to 20 GHz. Now, DC to 50 GHz-even higher -are becoming common. Instrumentation designers are challenged to enable the EW designers to test their designs, and the growth of mmWave 5G and 802.11 ad add more markets challenging instrument capabilities. Many microwave ICs have significant variation in performance over frequency, which is compounded by the operating voltage and temperature ranges. Variations in noise figure, gain, output power and linearity are all areas of focus for system designers, with the variation in gain over frequency often the most challenging aspect of the design. The falloff in gain requires additional high frequency gain stages, with equalizers to maintain flatness. MMIC innovations have emerged to support these broadband requirements. Custom MMIC's GaAs amplifiers with attractive characteristics, such as flat or positive gain slope over a 30 GHz bandwidth, are examples. Now, the new > 50 GHz systems have pushed Custom MMIC's designers to further innovation, where achieving flat gain is the new requirement set by users.