A SMALL CHIP SIZE 2 W, 62-PERCENT EFFICIENT HBT MMIC FOR 3 V PCN APPLICATIONS

This work describes the L-band low voltage (greater than or equal to 1 .6 V) power performance of AlGAs/GaAs heterojunction bipolar transisto rs (HBT's), their modeling and the design of a 2-W monolithic microwav e integrated circuit (MMIC) for 3-V wireless mobile PCN applications ( 1800 MHz). The two-stage MMIC achieves 62% power-added efficiency (PAE ) and 33 dB of linear gain, at a very small chip size of 1.2 mm(2). To our knowledge this is the best combination of power performance data for wireless applications demonstrated so far for a MMIC. The chip siz e is about a factor of four smaller than comparable MMIC's known befor e. The MMIC offers the potential both for low cost production due to s mall chip size, single voltage supply, and high performance at the sam e time.