A broadband PHEMT MMIC distributed doubler using high-pass drain line topology

A broadband frequency doubler, based on distributed amplifier techniques, has been designed to operate from 11 to 21 GHz. In order to reject the fundamental signal over a broadband frequency range, the conventional low-pass drain line structure was replaced with the high-pass structure. This topology can suppress fundamental signals over broadband without any balanced structure so that the chip size can be more compact. Measured conversion losses of better than 10 dB from 11 to 21 GHz input frequencies are achieved with fundamental signal rejection better than 12 dB. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of distributed doubler using the high-pass drain line topology.