A W-band two-stage cascode amplifier with gain of 25.7 dB

A W-band two-stage amplifier MMIC has been developed using a fully passivated 2 x 20 mu m gate-width and 0.15 mu m gate-length InP-based high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) technology. The two-stage amplifier has been realized in combination with a coplanar waveguide technique and cascode topology, thus leading to a compact chip-size of 1.85 x 0.932 mm(2) and an excellent small-signal gain of 25.7 dB at 106 GHz. Additionally, an inter-digital coupling capacitor blocks low-frequency signal, thereby enhancing the stability of the amplifier. The successful design of the two-stage amplifier MMIC indicates that InP HEMT technology has a great potential for W-band applications.