Miniaturized Multilayer CPW pHEMT Amplifiers

Compact pHEMT amplifiers, which are composed of newly developed miniaturized multilayer inductors and capacitors, have been designed, fabricated and characterised. Their measured performances are presented and compared with those of amplifiers composed of conventional planar components. The results show that multilayer technology reduces the size of the amplifiers by approximately 50% while maintaining the same performance. In this paper we demonstrate that the developed compact components are integrated with pre-fabricated GaAs pHEMTs to form 3D MMICs providing excellent performance and space saving resulting in low cost manufacturing of future MMICs.