A 4–420-GHz Distributed Amplifier MMIC in a 20-nm InGaAs-on-Si HEMT Technology With 11 ± 2 dB Gain

This letter presents a distributed amplifier (DA) monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) achieving a bandwidth (BW) of range-phrase = –4420with a small-signal gain of 11 ± 2. This sets a new BW record for ultrawideband amplifier MMICs. DA MMIC utilizes the Fraunhofer IAF 20gate-length InGaAs-on-Si high-electron-mobility transistor (HEMT) technology and features ten gain cells. Each cell contains an RF cascode using two-finger transistors with a total gate width (TGW) of 16. The measured noise figure (NF) is in the range of range-phrase = –3.27.7(<202) and range-phrase = –2.86.7when biased for low-noise (LN) conditions. Especially, the high-frequency NF shows a remarkable performance, e.g., achieving an average NF of 4.7;5(range-phrase = –163202) for LN and standard bias, respectively.