High Efficiency, Low Power, Low Noise Amplifiers for SATCOM

This proposal drastically reduces the existing power dissipation of low noise amplifiers within phase array systems. We have demonstrated both balanced and single ended amplifiers that meet the stringent specifications required by the phase 1 proposal. These designs are ready for immediate fabrication greatly reducing the time to market and demonstration within the Army’s communication systems. The balanced approach is an innovative and novel modification to a standard topology to achieve excellent performance with small size and mismatch tolerance. Such a novel use of current sharing in a balanced amplifier topology, along with a metamorphic HEMT (mHEMT) technology results in the smallest and best performance for this design. The mHEMT creates a situation where the smallest design can be achieved by reducing the number of stages of amplification necessary to achieve greater than 20dB of gain while maintaining an industry leading noise figure. Further reduction in size for the amplifiers is demonstrated with the use of lumped elements and lumped element hybrids in the place of distributed elements.