A hybrid amplifier as an RF building block

A hybrid RF amplifier SMD-chip offers the benefit of a really simple bypass circuitry, ease of construction and minimal size. As an example, with the MiniCircuits VNA, a gain of about 15 dB can be achieved through the frequency band of 500 MHz to 3 GHz. Input matching can be near a VSWR of 1.9. At frequencies above 3 GHz however the input might provide a reflection coefficient greater than unity depending on the mechanical solutions of the test setup. Conventional assembly techniques can be used, but hybrid amplifiers are better-suited to more complex SMD boards.