The 20 GHz GaAs monolithic power amplifier module development

摘要

This report covers work performed during the second 12 months of Contract No. NAS3-23781, a 36-month program for the development of a 20 GHz GaAs FET monolithic power amplifier module for advanced communication applications. Several amplifier design approaches were pursued to accomplish the program goals. Due to the success achieved during the first year of the program, most of the effort was spent on the direct common-source cascaded three-stage amplifier. After several modifications 1.8 W output power was obtained at 20 GHz with 10 dB gain and 14 efficiency. With reduced input power, 1.4 W was obtained with a linear gain of 13 dB. The amplifier was then redesigned to further improve microwave performance. A four-stage lower power amplifier was also designed for use with the four-way traveling-wave combiner. The output power of the distributed amplifier was increased to 0.8 W with 4 dB gain. This is higher than any distributed amplifier described in the literature.