X-BAND HIGH-POWER AMPLIFIER WITH A MAGNETICALLY COUPLED POWER-COMBINER

Abstract

In this article, a high-power amplifier for X-band application is studied, which consists of a two-stage amplifier with magnetically coupled power-combiners and dividers. These are based on transmission line transformers, which has lower loss characteristics than spiral-type transformers at the frequencies. The proposed amplifier utilizes the voltage-combining concept with the transformers and differential amplifiers. The size of the amplifier is also minimized by using the virtual grounds of the differential structure. The saturated output power of the power amplifier is 38.1 dBm (6.45 W), and the,gain is 17 dB at 10 GHz. The area of the chip is 2.56 mm x 3.13 mm and the power density of the amplifier is 806 mW/mm(2). (C) 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 52: 110-113, 2010; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.24851