Voltage

Engineering

Common emitter

Materials science

Bipolar junction transistor

Broadband

Amplifier

Linearity

Transistor

Physics

Heterojunction bipolar transistor

Optics

Topology (electrical circuits)

CMOS

Optoelectronics

Electrical engineering

IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters

This work presents a high efficiency, compact 80-110-GHz InP power amplifier (PA) based on stacked common base (CB) topology and a counterpart design using conventional stacked common emitter (CE) topology. The comparison between the two exhibits that the former delivers higher power gain, superior-gain compression behavior (linearity), and higher back-off efficiency in W-band in 250-nm InP heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT). At 90 GHz, the stacked CB/CE PA achieves 11.8 dB/6dB gain, 33%/34% peak PAE, 16.8%/14.5% PAE at 6-dB back-off, and Psat of 18.7 dBm/19.6 dBm. Modulation test exhibits an EVM of 2.38% at 11.8-dBm average power supporting 3 Gbps 64-QAM for the stacked CB PA. The stacked CB PA with 17.9-18.9-dBm Psat across 80-110 GHz demonstrates one of the highest efficiency, broadband and linear PAs in W-band using InP technology.

80–110-GHz Broadband Linear PA With 33% Peak PAE and Comparison of Stacked Common Base and Common Emitter PA in InP