Technical Insight
2000 GaAs IC Symposium (Conference Report)
Seattle, WA
November 6-8, 2000 As well as the technical talks, some of which are described below, the 2000 GaAs IC Symposium featured several Panel Sessions on topics including indium phosphide, 40 Gb/s systems, foundries and fabless companies, and the competition between E-mode PHEMTs and HBTs. These areas were all covered in the Things to Watch section of our February 2001 issue. Handset Power Amplifiers Third generation mobile communication systems such as W-CDMA require miniature power amplifiers with a combination of high efficiency and high linearity. A paper from Sharp described a two-stage PA MMIC, manufactured using a GaAs HBT process, which featured a novel linearizing bias circuit. The MMIC demonstrated 44% PAE, 27.6 dBm of output power and 21 dB gain with VBE) allows the 1/f noise density of type-B HBTs to be minimized by eliminating the recombination of carriers in the extrinsic base region [see page 245]. Fiber-Optic Link ICs A 10 Gb/s distributed driver IC containing a D-FF (flip-flop) function, for driving electroabsorption modulators, was described by Mitsubishi Electric. The IC, fabricated in a 0.2-m PHEMT process, operated from a
November 6-8, 2000 As well as the technical talks, some of which are described below, the 2000 GaAs IC Symposium featured several Panel Sessions on topics including indium phosphide, 40 Gb/s systems, foundries and fabless companies, and the competition between E-mode PHEMTs and HBTs. These areas were all covered in the Things to Watch section of our February 2001 issue. Handset Power Amplifiers Third generation mobile communication systems such as W-CDMA require miniature power amplifiers with a combination of high efficiency and high linearity. A paper from Sharp described a two-stage PA MMIC, manufactured using a GaAs HBT process, which featured a novel linearizing bias circuit. The MMIC demonstrated 44% PAE, 27.6 dBm of output power and 21 dB gain with VBE) allows the 1/f noise density of type-B HBTs to be minimized by eliminating the recombination of carriers in the extrinsic base region [see page 245]. Fiber-Optic Link ICs A 10 Gb/s distributed driver IC containing a D-FF (flip-flop) function, for driving electroabsorption modulators, was described by Mitsubishi Electric. The IC, fabricated in a 0.2-m PHEMT process, operated from a