A wideband high dynamic range triple‐stacked FET dual‐shunt distributed analogue voltage controlled attenuator

The authors present a novel wideband two‐dimensional voltage‐controlled attenuator (VCA). The proposed design employs both stacked‐FET configuration and distributed structure to achieve wideband performance, high power, and high dynamic range simultaneously. A systematic design methodology is also illustrated along with a fabricated prototype to verify the concept. The chip fabricated in a 0.15‐μm Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) process exhibiting a measured power at 1‐dB compression (P1dB) of 25.5 dBm with a corresponding dynamic range of 32 dB. The insertion loss ranges from 2 to 5 dB over the bandwidth from 2 to 40 GHz. Furthermore, the chip is not only very compact (0.84 mm2), but it also requires only a single positive supply voltage, which makes it more appealing to highly integrated wireless applications.