1–18 GHz Ultra-broadband High Gain Distributed MMIC Amplifier

This paper presents the design and measurement results of an ultra-broadband and high gain GaAs based compact monolithic microwave integrated circuit amplifier. The MMIC is designed using 150nm pseudomorphic high-electron-mobility transistor process in a compact size of 2.5mm x 1.5mm x 0.1mm. The amplifier is based on distributed amplifier topology where conventional distributed amplifier is used in conjunction with cascaded single-stage distributed amplifier stages to achieve large gain-bandwidth product of 374 GHz. Minimum gain of 22.5dB is achieved with low DC power consumption of only 240mW over the entire frequency band of 1–18 GHz.