Design technique for high power, high efficiency, broadband distributed amplifiers

It is shown that the power performance of distributed amplifiers can be greatly improved by designing the circuit so that the proper power match is presented to each device across the entire frequency range, even when the amplifier is designed for optimal small signal characteristics. This has been achieved by using a modified computer-aided design technique. The technique has been applied to an MMIC (monolithic microwave integrated circuit) distributed power amplifier design, with the result that improved efficiency (10-13%) and constant output power (>25 dBm) were achieved over the 6-18 GHz band, whereas conventionally designed circuits show 4-6-dB power degradation.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">></ETX>