High Power 10–18 GHz Monolithic Limiter Based on GaAs p-i-n Technology
Shifeng Li, Lijun Ma, Leiyang Wang, Xiao Lei, Bang Wu, Gary J. Cheng, Feng Liu
Abstract
Herein, based on a rounded rectangle p-i-n diode with the minimum radius allowed by the process and a 0.8- <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\boldsymbol {\mu }\mathbf {m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> thick I-layer, a high-power wideband monolithic limiter was realized by using GaAs p-i-n process. At 16 GHz, the maximum handling power of the monolithic limiter is up to 400 W (56 dBm), while the output power is less than 45 mW (16.5 dBm). Meantime, the insertion loss of the limiter is less than 0.55 dB and the return loss is better than −15 dB in the frequency range of 10–18 GHz, which has little effect on the signal of the receiver. It demonstrates that the limiter has a significant potential in high-frequency and high-power phased-array radars and communication systems.