A planar approach to millimeter-wave circuit design allows inexpensive photolithographic techniques to be applied to circuit development and manufacture, thus lowering the cost and enhancing performance and repeatability for these circuits. Such an approach will allow the precise machining requirements associated with (metallic) waveguide designs to be relaxed, and will lead the way toward futher integration of millimeter-wave systems in the form of monolithic millimeter-wave integrated circuits. A single-diode impatt planar unit-amplifier design, the subject of the proposed phase i effort, is the logical first step toward the development of high-power millimeter-wave impatt amplifiers. Use of computer-aided design and layout software will reduce circuit development time, and computer-aided measurement techniques will allow the accurate characterization of the unit-amplifier circuits so that multi-diode power combiners can be designed on the basis of single-diode amplifier measurements. A carefully-designed unit-amplifier can thus serve as the fundamental building block for millimeter-wave power amplifiers which use a number of impatt diodes to yield very high output power levels.
