Reduction of microwave amplifier gain variance

Abstract

It is well known that the parameters of otherwise identical transistors will vary considerably across a production batch. When such transistors are employed in otherwise identical microwave amplifiers, the gain of the amplifiers will vary across the batch, necessitating postproduction tuning. Using sensitivity analysis, perturbations of the transistor S-parameters S11 and S21 have been identified as having the most effect on microwave amplifier transducer gain. A reactive network placed at the input of the transistor is proposed to reduce the variance of S11, and hence to reduce the variance of the amplifier gain. Simulations reveal the viability of this approach compared with conventional microwave amplifier design approaches. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.