In this contribution, a short review of independent research activities on distributed power amplification is presented.
An analysis of the intrinsic limitations of distributed power amplifiers serves as a guideline to present some solutions available in the literature. This analysis shows that a distributed amplifier can work as an optimum class-A power combiner for a discrete set of frequency values determined by the selected active devices, and the phase shift and characteristic impedances between stages.
The solutions proposed over the years present several circuital configurations that offer different options for the distribution of the available gain-bandwidth product, which are briefly reviewed in this contribution.