In a 50 system, the characteristics of a microwave transistor measured at 2.0 GHz is
shown as the following.
Design an amplifier with an operating power gain of 8 dB.
Solution
This device is potentially unstable.
The input stability circle on plane has
The corresponding constant operating power gain has
We put both the constant operating power gain and input stability circles as shown in Figure 23.
Clearly, the chosen should stay away from the input stability circle and must be
on the constant operating power circle. Let's say, we choose
. Then we can
find the input reflection coefficient
If we use conjugate matching at the input,
Figure 23: The constant gain and input stability circles drawn
on
plane
We need to examine this to see whether it is in the stable region
by means of output stability circle in Figure 24. The output stability circles has
Figure 24: The output stability circle drawn on
plane
From Figure 24, is in the stable region. So
we can accept
and
as the design
value. Otherwise, we need to choose another value of
until the corresponding
is in the stable region. The above procedures are used for designing for a specified
power gain. If the objective is to design for low noise figure, we should
start with
in the beginning. Use the output stability circle to check
whether the
is in the stable region. If
is in
the stable region, choose
, otherwise choose a
in the stable region with lowest noise figure with the aid of constant noise
figure circle. For a given
, find the corresponding conjugate matched load
reflection coefficient
. Check its stability with the input stability circle.
Repeat the process until both
and
are in the stable regions.