• The Journal of Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and Science
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.584-597
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• 2011

In this paper, low-loss and high-power RF SP6T switch chips are designed, fabricated and measured for GSM/EGSM/DCS/PCS applications using WIN Semiconductors 0.5 ${\mu}m$ pHEMT process. We utilized a combined configuration of series and series-shunt structures for optimized switch performance, and a common transistor structure on a receiver path for reducing chip area. The gate width and the number of stacked transistors are determined using ON/OFF input power level of the transceiver system. To improve the switch performance, feed-forward capacitors, shunt capacitors and parasitic FET inductance elimination due to resonance are actively used. The fabricated chip size is $1.2{\times}1.5\;mm^2$. S-parameter measurement shows an insertion loss of 0.5~1.2 dB and isolation of 28~36 dB. The fabricated SP6T switch chips can handle 4 W input power and suppress second and third harmonics by more than 75 dBc.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea TC
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.45-50
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• 2004

In this paper, we present the low voltage and high efficiency Q-band MIMIC oscillator using device-level power combined structure. The oscillator was successfully integrated by using 0.1 ${\mu}{\textrm}{m}$ GaAs PHEMTS and the CPW transmission line. We show that the highest efficiency is 19 % with an output power of 2.6 ㏈m at a frequency of 34.56 ㎓. The operating voltage of the oscillator is 2.2 V which is lower voltage than that of previously reported oscillators at Q-band. And the maximum output power of 6.7 ㏈m was obtained at a frequency of 34.56 ㎓.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea TC
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• v.43 no.8 s.350
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• pp.91-96
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• 2006

High efficiency switching mode circuits such as class I amplifiers have been well known in the MHz frequency range. The class E amplifier is a type of switching mode amplifier offering very high efficiency approaching 100%. In this paper, the class E amplifier has been designed by using the harmonic balance method of circuit simulator. The designed amplifier is realized by using pHEMT and microstrip line, shows 66% power added efficiency (PAE) at 2.4GHz with 17.6dBm output power. With -3dBm input power of wireless LAN, measured output spec01m can meet the required IEEE 802.11g standard spectrum mask. That means the required amplifier back off of 9dB from $P_{ldB}$ to satisfy the required wireless LAN spectrum mask.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.339-345
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• 2016

This paper presents a two-stage power amplifier MMIC using a $0.4{\mu}m$ GaN-HEMT process. The two-stage structure provides high gain and compact circuit size using an integrated inter-stage matching network. The size and loss of the inter-stage matching network can be reduced by including bond wires as part of the matching network. The two-stage power amplifier MMIC was fabricated with a chip size of $2.0{\times}1.9mm^2$ and was mounted on a $4{\times}4$ QFN carrier for evaluation. Using a downlink LTE signal with a PAPR of 6.5 dB and a channel bandwidth of 10 MHz for the 2.6 GHz band, the power amplifier MMIC exhibited a gain of 30 dB, a drain efficiency of 32%, and an ACLR of -31.4 dBc at an average output power of 36 dBm. Using two power amplifier MMICs for the carrier and peaking amplifiers, a Doherty power amplifier was designed and implemented. At a 6 dB back-off output power level of 39 dBm, a gain of 24.7 dB and a drain efficiency of 43.5% were achieved.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Military Science and Technology
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.452-459
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• 2009

A 6-bit MMIC digital attenuator applicable to X-band TR module has been developed by using $0.5{\mu}m$GaAs pHEMT processes. The Switched-T attenuator scheme and the switched-path attenuator scheme were adopted to obtain low insertion loss and small phase variation, respectively. Resistors and transmission lines are optimized to achieve the digital attenuator with high attenuation accuracy and small phase variation. The digital attenuator has RMS error of 0.4dB, resolution of 0.5dB and dynamic range of 31.5dB. The measurement results show that in-out VSWRs are less than 1.5, phase variation is from -7 to +2 degrees and IIP3 is 36.5dBm.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 2006.06a
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• pp.471-472
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• 2006

The passivation technology is very important, because this technology can protect a device against the influence of ambient environment, and prevent the performance reduction. In this paper, we fabricated the $0.1{\mu}m\;{\Gamma}$-gate InAlAs/InGaAs metamorphic high electron mobility transistors (MHEMTs) on GaAs substrates using the low-k benzocyclobutene (BCB) and $Si_3N_4$ as a passivation and we performed the comparisons of characteristics of the MHEMTs. After passivation, the DC and RF measurement results were decreased either the conventional Si3N4 or BCB layers. The decrement of the BCB passivation was smaller than the $Si_3N_4$ passivation.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.39 no.5
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• pp.737-745
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• 2017

A 6-GHz-to-18-GHz monolithic nonuniform distributed power amplifier has been designed using the load modulation of increased series gate capacitance. This amplifier was implemented using a $0.25-{\mu}m$ AlGaN/GaN HEMT process on a SiC substrate. With the proposed load modulation, we enhanced the amplifier's simulated performance by 4.8 dB in output power, and by 13.1% in power-added efficiency (PAE) at the upper limit of the bandwidth, compared with an amplifier with uniform gate coupling capacitors. Under the pulse-mode condition of a $100-{\mu}s$ pulse period and a 10% duty cycle, the fabricated power amplifier showed a saturated output power of 39.5 dBm (9 W) to 40.4 dBm (11 W) with an associated PAE of 17% to 22%, and input/output return losses of more than 10 dB within 6 GHz to 18 GHz.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.181-187
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• 2019

In this paper, we demonstrated a power amplifier monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) for X-band radar applications. It utilizes commercial $0.25{\mu}m$ GaN-based high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) technology and delivers more than 20 W of output power. The developed GaN-based power amplifier MMIC has small signal gain of over 22 dB and saturated output power of over 43.3 dBm (21.38 W) in a pulse operation mode with pulse width of $200{\mu}s$ and duty cycle of 4% over the entire band of 9 to 10 GHz. The chip dimensions are $3.5mm{\times}2.3mm$, generating the output power density of $2.71W/mm^2$. Its power added efficiency (PAE) is 42.6-50.7% in the frequency bandwidth from 9 to 10 GHz. The developed GaN-based power amplifier MMIC is expected to be applied in a variety of X-band radar applications.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.42 no.4
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• pp.549-561
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• 2020

We developed a 0.1-㎛ metamorphic high electron mobility transistor and fabricated a W-band monolithic microwave integrated circuit chipset with our in-house technology to verify the performance and usability of the developed technology. The DC characteristics were a drain current density of 747 mA/mm and a maximum transconductance of 1.354 S/mm; the RF characteristics were a cutoff frequency of 210 GHz and a maximum oscillation frequency of 252 GHz. A frequency multiplier was developed to increase the frequency of the input signal. The fabricated multiplier showed high output values (more than 0 dBm) in the 94 GHz-108 GHz band and achieved excellent spurious suppression. A low-noise amplifier (LNA) with a four-stage single-ended architecture using a common-source stage was also developed. This LNA achieved a gain of 20 dB in a band between 83 GHz and 110 GHz and a noise figure lower than 3.8 dB with a frequency of 94 GHz. A W-band image-rejection mixer (IRM) with an external off-chip coupler was also designed. The IRM provided a conversion gain of 13 dB-17 dB for RF frequencies of 80 GHz-110 GHz and image-rejection ratios of 17 dB-19 dB for RF frequencies of 93 GHz-100 GHz.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.44 no.4
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• pp.80-85
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• 2007

The passivation is one of the important technologies for protection of the devies from damage. In this paper, we fabricated $0.1{\mu}m\;{\Gamma}$--gate InAIAs/InGaAs metamorphic high electron mobility transistors (MHEMTs) on a GaAs substrate. And then the wafer with MHEMTs was divided into two pieces; one for passivation and another for without passivation experiments. The passivations were done by using both low-k BCB and Si3N4 thin films. DC and RF performances were measured and the results are compared. The MHEMTs with BCB passivation show lower degradation than ones with Si3N4 passivation.