Reme, L.l.c.

Nanowave, Inc.

Stephen R Nelson

Gregory T Clark

Saphan Yok

Dean R White

Kazuya Ozawa

A FET or BJT structure or distributed transistor amplifier having a tapered gate feed line and a tapered channel width (tapered source fingers, tapered drain fingers) provides increased bandwidth and gain in the microwave/mm-wave frequency spectrum.

Gate feed structure for reduced size field effect transistors

A wideband distributed or feedback amplifier monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) is disclosed that contains an integrated group delay equalizer circuit to compensate for the group delay variation of the amplifier circuitry. The MMIC amplifier is capable of achieving a predicted constant group delay with little variation over a wide frequency range. In addition, the group delay equalizer circuit enables the amplifier to achieve flat (constant) gain over a wide bandwidth, while maintaining constant group delay. Furthermore, the group delay equalizer circuitry requires only a small portion of the total MMIC area.

Group delay equalizer integrated with a wideband distributed amplifier monolithic microwave integrated circuit

A small area cascode FET structure capable of operating at mm-wave frequenices cascades a common-source (CS) FET with a common gate (CG) FET, in a smaller physical area than conventional cascode FET structures. The small area of the cascode FET structure is partially achieved by using small source via grounds, requiring a thin gallium arsenide substrate (typically between 50 and 70 microns thick). The overall cascode area is reduced further, by having the two FETs share a common node. This common node is the output drain manifold of the CS FET, which is also an input source finger of the CG FET. In addition, small via grounds within the MIM capacitors and CS FET, which provide the ground connection to the gate manifolds of the CG FET, further reduce circuit area. Advantageously, the small area cascode FET can be applied to many different MMICs to reduce MMIC area requirements and cost.

Small area cascode FET structure operating at mm-wave frequencies

A small aspect ratio, high power MMIC amplifier is disclosed. The small aspect ratio MMIC amplifier is capable of achieving the same power levels as conventional power amplifier designs, but with an aspect ratio of near 1:1, versus 4:1 of conventional power amplifiers. The small aspect ratio MMIC amplifier layout uses two different types of FETs, with all gate fingers of both types of FETs running in the same direction. One type of FET is a conventional FET, in which the gate stripes run parallel to the direction of the output. In the conventional FET, the gate manifold and the drain manifold both generally extend in the x-direction (parallel to each other). The other type of FET has gate fingers that run perpendicular to the direction of the output. In this other type of FET, the gate manifold generally extends in the x-direction, while the drain manifold generally extends in the y-direction (perpendicular to each other). By using two different types of FETs, large gate width power FETs can be placed on two, three or four sides of the MMIC.

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Springfield, MO, United States of America

Stephen R Nelson