A Full G-band Power Amplifier with 34% Peak PAE in InP-DHBT Technology

This paper presents a highly efficient full G-band power amplifier (PA) using 500 nm InP-DHBT technology. It consists of 3 stages using a cascade unit power cell. Measurements show in average 12 dB small signal gain in the range 140-220 GHz. At 219 GHz, a saturated output power (Psat) around 13 dBm is achieved. The dc power consumption is 58 mW and results in a power-added efficiency (PAE) of up to 30% at 219 GHz. The peak PAE of 34% is achieved at 160 GHz. The chip area is only 1.5x0.7 mm
²
. To the knowledge of the authors, this is the highest efficiency for a full G-band amplifier published so far.