TABLE 1
Performance Comparison of the VCO
REFERENCES
Reference
fo
(GHz)
VDD
(V)
P
(mW)
Phase Noise
(dBc/Hz at
1MHz offset)
FOM
(dBc/Hz)
[1]
[6]
[7]
This work
19.85
21.6
59
22.35
1.8
3
1.5
1.8
40.32
45
9.8
21.24
⫺111.67
⫺101.75
⫺89
⫺102.4
⫺181.5
⫺171.9
⫺174.5
⫺176.1
冢
冣
៮ıN2
2
⌬f ⌫rms
L兵⌬ ␻ 其 ⫽ 10 log 2 䡠
.
qmax 2⌬␻2
(3)
2.3. Frequency Doubler
The differential output of the VCO is directly connected to the
frequency doubler input. The frequency doubler consists of clipping transistors and inductor loads, as shown in Figure 2 [1]. The
input of the pinch-off clipping transistors need large swing signals
with a lower d.c. level. However, the input of the clipper has high
impedance since a common source stage has high input impedance
and the low miller capacitance due to low load impedance of the
clipper.
3. MEASUREMENT RESULTS
Figure 4 shows the micrograph of the proposed cascode CMOS LC
VCO using frequency doubler which has been fabricated in a
standard 0.18 ␮m CMOS technology. The chip size is 653 ⫻ 715
␮m2 including the pads. All measurements are with 1.8 V power
supply voltage and current consumption of 11.8 mA in the VCO
core circuit and frequency doubler. Figure 5 shows the output
spectrum at the center frequency of the VCO. Harmonic spectrum
of the frequency doubler is shown in Figure 6. The doubled
frequency signal of 22.35 GHz has about ⫺36.54 dBm output
without considering line and cable loss, while a fundamental
power of about 11.2 GHz is below ⫺40 dBm. The tuning characteristic of the cascode VCO is shown in Figure 7. The tuning range
is about 1.32 GHz with tuning voltage from 0.5 to 1.6 V. Figure 8
shows the measured phase noise characteristic. The measured
phase noise is about ⫺102.4 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset. The normalized phase noise has been defined as a figure-of-merit (FOM)
[5]
FOM ⫽ 10 log
冋冉 冊
册
␻o 2 1
.
⌬␻ L兵⌬␻其P
(4)
The FOM of the proposed VCO is about ⫺176.1 dBc/Hz. A
comparison of the CMOS LC VCO based on the FOM is summarized in Table 1.
1. S. Ko, J.-G. Kim, T. Song, E. Yoon and S. Hong., K- and Q-bands
CMOS frequency sources with X-band quadrature VCO, IEEE Trans
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phase-locked loop frequency synthesizer in SiGe bipolar technology,
IEEE MTT-S Int Microwave Symp Dig 1 (2002), 831– 834.
3. A. Hajimiri and T.H. Lee, Design issues in CMOS differential LC
oscillators, IEEE J Solid-State Circuits 34 (1999), 717–724.
4. K.-L. Chan, M.-A. Do, K.-S. Yeo, and J.-G. Ma, 1.5 V 1.8 GHz
bandpass amplifier, IEE Proc Circuits Devices 147 (2000).
5. P. Kinget, Integrated GHz voltage controlled oscillators, In: W. Sansen,
J. Huijsing, and R. van de Plassche (Eds.), Analog circuit design,
Kluwer, Norwell, MA, 1999.
6. D. Ozis, N.M. Neihart, and D.J. Allstot, Differential VCO and passive
frequency doubler in 0.18 ␮m CMOS for 24 GHz applications, IEEE
(2006).
7. C. Cao and K.O. Kenneth, Millimeter-wave voltage-controlled oscillators in 0.13-␮m CMOS technology, IEEE J Solid-State Circuits 41
(2006), 1297–1304.
© 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
A DISTRIBUTED AMPLIFIER WITH 12.5dB GAIN AND 82.5-GHz BANDWIDTH
USING 0.1 ␮m GaAs METAMORPHIC
HEMTs
Jinho Jeong,1 Sung-Won Kim,2 Wooyeol Choi,2
Kwang-Seok Seo,2 and Youngwoo Kwon2
1
Department of Electronics and Communications Engineering,
Kwangwoon University, Seoul Korea 139 –701; Corresponding
author: jjeong@kw.ac.kr
2
School of Electrical Engineering, Seoul National University, Seoul
Korea 151–742
Received 19 April 2007
ABSTRACT: In this letter, the monolithic distributed amplifier with
active control scheme is presented, using 0.1 ␮m GaAs metamorphic
HEMT technology, with a maximum operating frequency of 315 GHz.
Active feedback resistor, which adjusts the negative resistance generated
by the cascode gain cell, is employed to maximize the bandwidth of the
entire distributed amplifier without oscillation. The measurement of the
distributed amplifier with 5 cascode gain cells shows the gain of 12.5 ⫾
1.2 dB and 3-dB bandwidth of 82.5 GHz corresponding to the ultrahigh
gain-bandwidth product of 347 GHz. Group delay variation is also measured to be less than ⫾8.9 ps up to 60 GHz. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals,
Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 49: 2873–2875, 2007; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/
mop.22844
Key words: bandwidth; distributed amplifier; metamorphic high electron mobility transistor
1. INTRODUCTION
4. CONCLUSION
A fully integrated cascode CMOS LC VCO using frequency
doubler is presented. Using fully symmetrical cascode coupling
scheme, the proposed VCO has 1.32 GHz tuning range and 21.24
mW power consumption. The negative conductance circuit is used
for improving the phase noise performance, the VCO is fabricated
in 0.18 ␮m CMOS technology. The LC VCO oscillates in a 22.35
GHz band and the measured phase noise of the VCO is about
⫺102.4 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset. The FOM of the VCO is ⫺176.1
dBc/Hz.
DOI 10.1002/mop
Recently, a metamorphic high electron mobility transistor
(mHEMT) technologies on GaAs substrate have been intensively
studied for low noise, high power, and high frequency applications
[1– 6]. They have shown an excellent high frequency performance
comparable to that of InP HEMTs in the cut-off frequency, gain,
noise, and output power. The GaAs substrate is more cost-effective
than InP substrate, since the former can overcome the problems of
the latter, such as the inherent fragility, limited wafer size, and
difficulty in via-hole process. Moreover, the indium content in
InGaAs channel layer of GaAs mHEMT can be varied to some
MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 49, No. 11, November 2007
2873
extent to optimize its performance depending on the applications
[1]. Therefore, GaAs mHEMTs are suitable for low-cost high
performance millimeter-wave ICs in spite of its low on-state
breakdown voltage and poor thermal conductivity of GaAs substrate [2], such as ultralow noise amplifiers [3], power amplifiers
[4], high order frequency dividers [5], and broadband distributed
amplifiers [2, 6].
In this article, a cascode distributed amplifier with ultrahigh
gain-bandwidth product of 347 GHz is presented, using 0.1 ␮m
GaAs mHEMT technologies, for high-speed fiber optic communications. We believe this result belongs to one of the highest
gain-bandwidth products among the reported distributed amplifier
using GaAs mHEMT technologies. The active feedback resistors
were employed at the cascode gain FET to optimize the bandwidth
and stability of the distributed amplifier, which was previously
proposed by the authors in Ref. 7. Therefore, this work demonstrates that the combination of high performance GaAs mHEMT
technology and the proposed active control scheme can result in
the ultrahigh gain-bandwidth product of the distributed amplifier.
2. DESIGN OF CASCODE DISTRIBUTED AMPLIFIER
Cascode FETs are widely used as a gain cell for a broadband
distributed amplifier, since they provide a high gain at high frequency resulting in high gain-bandwidth product [2, 6, 7]. They
also present the negative resistance compensating for the losses
caused by resistive components in FETs and transmission lines,
which further improves the high frequency performance and bandwidth of distributed amplifier. However, it sometimes causes the
instability at the high-frequency band edge because of overcompensation or excessively generated negative resistance. The feedback resistor is usually employed at the gate of CG-FET to
stabilize the cascode FETs by reducing the amount of negative
resistance. However, excessive feedback resistance rather degrades the high frequency performance of cascode FETs resulting
in the bandwidth reduction of distributed amplifier. Therefore, the
value of this feedback resistance should be accurately determined
for trade-off between stability and bandwidth. But, it is difficult to
find the optimum feedback resistance value at the design stage
because of the process variations and inaccurate device models
especially at high frequencies [7].
In this work, the fixed thin film resistor at the gate of CG-FET
of cascode FET was replaced with active variable resistor, so that
Figure 2 Photograph of the fabricated distributed amplifier. The chip
size is 1.7 mm ⫻ 0.9 mm. [Color figure can be viewed in the online issue,
which is available at www.interscience.wiley.com]
its value can be adjusted after chip fabrication as shown in Figure
1 [7]. Figure 1 shows the circuit schematic of 5-stage distributed
amplifier using cascode FETs with active feedback resistors at the
gate of CF-FETs. Two 80 ␮m-wide FETs are used for cascode
configuration. The active feedback resistors are implemented with
the channel resistance of 50 ␮m-wide FET biased at linear region.
The feedback resistance can be controlled by the gate-to-source or
gate-to-drain bias voltage Vfc, which determines the negative resistance generated by cascode FET. Therefore, it can effectively
optimize the high frequency performance of distributed amplifier
after MMIC fabrication. The big parallel resistor Rp was used to
make sure that the drain and source of FET have the same bias
voltage. It also helps the variable resistor to operate in the linear
region with the large input signal.
⟨ scalable large-signal model was developed based on the
measured S-parameters and DC IV characteristics of 100 ␮m-wide
FETs. The coefficients of the nonlinear drain current and capacitance equations were optimized to best curve fit the measured data
at various gate and drain bias region. The CPW lines with impedance of 70 ohm were used for the gate and drain transmission lines.
The gate and drain line impedance is reduced close to 50 ohm as
a result of the loading effect by the input and output capacitance of
FET. The gate and drain termination impedance, Rgt and Rdt, were
implemented with the thin film resistor of 50 ohm. Air bridges are
placed around tee junctions to minimize the discontinuities. The
open stub was added at the input port to improve the input return
loss at high frequency.
3. FABRICATION AND MEASUREMENT
Figure 1 Circuit schematic of the designed distributed amplifier with 5
cascode gain cells
2874
A designed distributed amplifier was fabricated using In0.4AlAs/
In0.35GaAs metamorphic HEMTs, which were grown by molecular beam epitaxy on semi-insulating GaAs substrate. The measurement of the 0.1 ␮m GaAs mHEMTs showed the current gain
cut-off frequency of 153 GHz and the maximum operating frequency of 315 GHz at the gate bias voltage of 0.1 V and drain bias
voltage of 2 V. The maximum available gain was higher than 10
dB at 77 GHz. The gate breakdown voltage was measured to be 7.1
V with gate leakage current of 1 mA/mm [8].
Figure 2 shows the fabricated distributed amplifier on CPW, so
that there is no need for via-hole process. The thickness of GaAs
substrate was 650 ␮m. The chip size is as small as 1.7 ⫻ 0.9 mm2.
The S-parameters were measured up to 110 GHz by on-wafer
probing as shown in Figure 3. The bias condition was as follows:
the gate bias voltage of common-source FET, Vg1 ⫽ ⫺0.35 V, the
gate bias voltage of common-gate FET, Vg2 ⫽ 0.9 V, and the drain
bias voltage, Vd ⫽ 3.3 V. The Vg1 and Vd were applied through the
MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 49, No. 11, November 2007
DOI 10.1002/mop
external bias tees. The total DC current was 128 mA, including the
current of 66 mA flowing into the drain termination resistor Rdt of
50 ohm. The feedback control voltage Vfc, which determines the
gate feedback resistance of cascode FET, was adjusted to obtain
the optimum performance of distributed amplifier. As shown in
Figure 3, the measurement shows the gain of 12.5 ⫾ 1.2 dB with
3-dB bandwidth of 82.5 GHz at Vfc of 0.0 V, which corresponds to
gain-bandwidth product of 347 GHz. The input and output return
losses were better than 10 dB up to 50 GHz, and 8 dB up to 80
GHz. This figure also demonstrates that the bandwidth and stability of the distributed amplifier can be controlled by Vfc. At Vfc
greater than 0.4 V, the gain overshoot was observed together with
S22 higher than zero at high frequency band edge. It implies that
the cascode distributed amplifier can be instable especially at high
frequency band edge because of the excessively generated negative resistance by cascode FET [7]. Therefore, the active feedback
control is an effective way to tune the performance of the GaAs
mHEMT distributed amplifier, as well for maximum gain-bandwidth product without oscillation. Group delay variation, which is
related to the phase linearity of the amplifier, was also measured at
Vfc ⫽ 0.0 V, or the control voltage allowing the best gainbandwidth product. Figure 4 shows the group delay variation less
than ⫾8.9 ps up to 60 GHz.
Figure 4
0.0 V
Measured group delay at the feedback control voltage Vfc ⫽
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
4. CONCLUSION
In this article, the monolithic distributed amplifier with high gainbandwidth product was presented using 0.1 ␮m GaAs mHEMT
technology on coplanar waveguide. A 5-stage cascode distributed
amplifier showed the gain-bandwidth product of 347 GHz with
group delay variation less than ⫾8.9 ps up to 60 GHz. It is also
shown that the active feedback resistors employed in the cascode
gain cell can effectively adjust the bandwidth and stability of the
distributed amplifier after chip fabrication. Therefore, it can minimize the failure of the monolithic distributed amplifiers, such as
oscillation at high frequency band edge, which may be caused
because of the inaccurate device model and process variations. It
is worthwhile to note that the developed GaAs mHEMT distributed amplifier with the active control scheme in this work is useful
for low-cost high-speed optical communications.
This work was financially supported by the National Program for
Tera-Hz Level Integrated Circuits of the Minister of Science and
Technology as one of the 21 Century Frontier Programs.
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© 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Figure 3 Measured S-parameters at various feedback control voltage Vfc
with Vg1 ⫽ ⫺0.35 V, Vg2 ⫽ 0.9 V, and Vd ⫽ 3.3 V. The S11 and S22 were
measured at Vfc ⫽ 0.0 V
DOI 10.1002/mop
MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 49, No. 11, November 2007
2875