A high speed multi-modulus HBT prescaler

A high-speed variable-modulus prescaler which divides the input clock frequency by 128 up to 255 with unit step increment has been implemented with heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) technology. A maximum operation frequency of 9.72 GHz with power consumption of 650 mW has been measured. The high-speed performance is attributed to the circuit design to minimize the critical path delay and the intrinsic high-speed characteristics of HBT technology. The circuit design and the fabrication of the devices are described, and the measured performance of the prescalers is discussed. >