V-Band Power Amplifier MMIC Cell Implemented in GaAs

A versatile compact power-amplifier cell for rapid development of V-band GaAs MMICs is reported. It was designed using a single-finger, non-linear model with an EM simulation of the interconnect. In a small active area of 1.8 mm<sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup>, the cell offers 30.1 dB power gain over the 58–66 GHz band. The versatility for rapid development is demonstrated by assembling various amplifiers: two cells in parallel, a full-balanced amplifier with four cells, and a transceiver MMIC using a single-cell as the transmitter and a half-cell as the receiver. For these variants output power is 27.3, 29.3, 19.6 dBm at 1-dB gain compression, and 29.8, 29.9, 27.3 dBm in saturation respectively.