Group delay equalised monolithic microwave integrated circuit amplifier for ultra-wideband based on right/left-handed transmission line design approach

A group delay equalised InGaP/GaAs HBT monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) amplifier with an active balun for ultra-wideband (UWB) application has been developed. The MMIC consists of a broadband amplifier with an active balun and a group delay equaliser. The group delay equaliser was designed based on a theory using a composite right/left-handed (CRLH) transmission line. Adding a right-handed (RH) transmission line to a CRLH transmission line in parallel, a convex group delay characteristic is realised. Since various UWB components have concave group delay characteristics, the group delay equaliser can compensate a concave group delay characteristic of the amplifier in an operation frequency band. In this paper, dispersion, group delay and impedance characteristics for the proposed CRLH/RH circuit have been theoretically analysed. Moreover, a minimised group delay equaliser circuit on an MMIC has been designed and fabricated based on the proposed CRLH/RH circuit. A fabricated group delay equalised InGaP/GaAs HBT MMIC amplifier with an active balun exhibited an improved group delay characteristic compared with the MMIC amplifier without the group delay equaliser. The standard deviations of group delays for a frequency variation in a gain band were decreased from 12.8 to 5.5 ps at S-21 and decreased from 10.3 to 7.3 ps at S-31.