Abstract: A low noise distributed amplifier consisting of 9 gain cells is presented. The chip is fabricated with 0.15-μm GaAs pseudomorphic high electron mobility transistor (PHEMT) technology from Win Semiconductor of Taiwan. A special optional gate bias technique is introduced to allow an adjustable gain control range of 10 dB. A novel cascode structure is adopted to extend the output voltage and bandwidth. The measurement results show that the amplifier gives an average gain of 15 dB with a gain flatness of ±1 dB in the 2-20 GHz band. The noise figure is between 2 and 4.1 dB during the band from 2 to 20 GHz. The amplifier also provides 13.8 dBm of output power at a 1 dB gain compression point and 10.5 dBm of input third order intercept point (IIP3), which demonstrates the excellent performance of linearity. The power consumption is 300 mW with a supply of 5 V, and the chip area is 2.36 × 1.01 mm².

Key words: distributed amplifiers, low noise, adjustable gain control, GaAs PHEMT