Millimeter-Wave Front-End Components in Metamorphic HEMT Technology

We report on the latest results of millimeter-wave IC components realized using IAF's metamorphic HEMT technology, ranging from small-signal low-noise amplifiers to nonlinear applications such as power amplifiers and frequency converters. A G-band four-stage cascode amplifier MMIC achieves 21 dB gain at 220 GHz. At 155 GHz, a two-stage cascode design reaches 15 dB gain with a noise figure of 4 dB. Frequency conversion is demonstrated in a doubler, achieving more than 0 dBm output power over the frequency range from 180 to 220 GHz. The same doubler is combined with a resistive mixer to form a G-band down-converter with as low as 10 dB conversion loss. At 94 GHz, a two-stage power amplifier MMIC achieves 23.3 dBm