A 0.15 µm T-shaped gate AlInAs/InGaAs high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) with an excellent RF performance has been developed using selective wet gate recess etching. The gate recess is formed by a pH-adjusted citric acid/NH4OH/H2O2 mixture with an etching selectivity of more than 30 for InGaAs over AlInAs. The standard deviation of saturation drain current (Idss) is as small as 3.2 mA for an average Idss of 47 mA on a 3 inch diameter InP wafer. The etching time for recess formation is optimized and an ft of 130 GHz and an MSG of 10 dB at 60 GHz are obtained. The extremely low minimum noise figure (Fmin) of 0.9 dB with an associated gain (Ga) of 7.0 dB has been achieved at 60 GHz for a SiON-passivated device. This noise performance is comparable to the lowest value of Fmin ever reported for an AlInAs/InGaAs HEMT with a passivation film.

A Q-band high gain and low noise Variable Gain Amplifier (VGA) module using dual gate AlGaAs/InGaAs pseudomorphic HEMTs has been developed. The dual gate HEMT can be fabricated by the same process of the single gate HEMT which has the gate length of 0.15 µm. The Q-band VGA module consists of a 1-stage low noise amplifier (LNA) MMIC using a single gate HEMT and a 2-stage VGA MMIC using dual gate HEMTs. During the design, an accurate noise modeling is introduced to achieve low noise performance. A fully passivated film is employed to achieve reliability. The VGA module has a gain of more than 20 dB from 41 GHz to 52 GHz and a maximum gain of 24.5 dB at 50 GHz. A gain control range of more than 30 dB is achieved in the same frequency range. A phase deviation is less than 10 degrees in 10 dB gain control range. A minimum noise figure of 1.8 dB with an associated gain of 22 dB is achieved at 43 GHz and the noise figure is less than 2.5 dB with associated gain of more than 20 dB from 41 GHz to 46 GHz when biased for low noise figure. This performance is comparable with the best data ever reported for LNAs at Q-band including both GaAs based HEMTs and InP based HEMTs.

An ultra low noise 50-GHz-Band amplifier (LNA) MMIC has been developed using an AlGaAs/InGaAs pseudomorphic HEMT. A noise figure of 1.8 dB with an associated gain of 8.1 dB is achieved at 50 GHz. The noise figure is less than 2.0 dB from 50 GHz to 52.5 GHz. This is the state-of-the-art noise figure for low noise amplifiers around 50 GHz. The success of this LNA development came from the excellent HEMT and MMIC technologies and the accurate modeling of active and passive elements. Good agreement between measured and simulated data over the band from 40 GHz to 60 GHz is obtained.

Millimeter-wave monolithic low noise amplifier modules using 0.15 µm AlGaAs/InGaAs/GaAs pseudomorphic HEMTs have been developed at V- and W-bands for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer. To achieve low noise and high gain of V-band single-stage and W-band two-stage monolithic amplifiers, a reactive matching method is employed in the design of input noise matching and output gain matching circuits based on the results of on-carrier S-parameter measurements up to 50 GHz and noise parameter measurements at 60 and 90 GHz. A V-band four-stage monolithic amplifier module has been mounted on a hermetically-sealed package with microstrip interface and has achieved a noise figure of 3 dB with a gain of 42.2 dB at 51 GHz. A W-band six-stage amplifier module has been mounted on a hermetically-sealed package with waveguide interface and has achieved a noise figure of 4.3 dB with a gain of 28.1 dB at 91 GHz. These results represent the best noise figure performance ever achieved by multi-stage monolithic low-noise amplifier modules.

A novel millimeter-wave on-wafer CAT(Computer-Aided-Testing ) system has been developed for measurement of S-parameters and NF ( Noise figure ). For the S-parameter test system, we have developed a holder setup and installed it in a semi-automatic wafer prober so that the waveguide-based T/R module can be directly connected to a probe-head through fixed waveguides, which feature low insertion loss of less than 2 dB, from 75 GHz to 98 GHz. The accuracy of the developed test system was confirmed by measuring, with this system, a co-planar offset short pattern then comparing measured and simulated results. A good agreement between the measured and calculated, in both return loss and return phase successfully demonstrated the superiority of the system. A W-band NF test system with a system noise of less than 8 dB has been also developed to provide an on-wafer NF measurement capability with an accuracy of 0.3 dB. These S-parameter and NF test systems possess great advantages to achieve high-speed automatic MMIC testing up to W-band.

This paper describes numerical analyses of resistive mixer operation, followed by measured performances of a V-band (50 - 75 GHz) monolithic InP HEMT resistive mixer operable with a very low LO power. Our model assumes that the channel conductance of the InP HEMT can be described by three linear functions according to the applied gate voltage. The calculated results obtained with the model have shown that the LO power level required for mixer operation is determined by the gate bias voltage and that a device with abrupt conductance shifts is suited to low LO power operation for a resistive mixer. It is also shown that conversion loss saturation of a resistive mixer is caused by its channel conductance saturation. A V-band monolithic resistive mixer has been designed and fabricated using Coplanar Waveguides (CPW) and a 0.15 mm InP HEMT with abrupt channel shifts. Good agreement between measured and simulated conversion losses are obtained. A minimum conversion loss of 8.4 dB is achieved at the 55 GHz RF-frequency and the -2 dBm LO power. It also exhibits an excellent IF output linearity to allow the 1 dB compression RF input level to be comparable with LO power, indicating good intermodulation performance. It is demonstrated that the proposed simple model of the channel conductance can easily calculate conversion characteristics of a resistive mixer with high accuracy.