LOW-NOISE L-BAND (WIDEBAND) TRANSISTOR AMPLIFIER.

This is a report of research and development leading to the fabrication of exploratory development models of extremely wideband transistor amplifiers at L-band frequencies. The work effort has been directed toward 1 device characterization 2 evaluation of coupler configurations and 3 the fabrication and evaluation of a single-stage amplifier that uses two four-section branch-line couplers and transistors that are similar to the L-148a. The results of the work performed are 1 the TI-line Reg package does not distort device characteristics too severely and 2 the branch-line coupler may be too large for use in this program, and TEM couplers require less space but present fabrication problems because of line widths and spacing. The following conclusions have been drawn 1 the TI-Line Reg. package is satisfactory for use at L-band frequencies 2 further work is necessary before the best coupler configuration can be determined and 3 the problem of gain compensation must be studied more intensively the coupling should be tighter than 3 db at midband to hold the average VSWR at a minimum. Author