A 300 GHz Active Frequency Tripler in Transferred-Substrate InP DHBT Technology

This paper presents a monolithic integrated active frequency tripler implemented in an InP double heterojunction bipolar transistor (DHBT) transferred-substrate (TS) technology. The active tripler is based on a balanced topology with Marchand balun at the input and rat-race hybrid coupler at the output. Reflector networks are employed to enhanced the third harmonic response. The measured third harmonic output power is -2.4dBm at 267 GHz and -6.2 dBm at 303 GHz. The second harmonic leakage remains 10 dB lower than the third harmonic power over this bandwidth. The DC power consumption of the active tripler is only 37.6 mW at 303 GHz leading to a DC conversion efficiency of 0.64%.