A dual-purpose reconfigurable negative group delay circuit based on distributed amplifiers

In this letter, a novel reconfigurable negative group delay distributed amplifier (NGD-DA) circuit is proposed. This NGD-DA offers a new method to realize negative group delay. By properly choosing the gain coefficient of each tap for the DA, we can synthesize the negative group delay at the reverse port of the DA in the frequency band of interest, while maintaining a flat gain at the forward port; this results in a dual-purpose DA. Moreover, the proposed NGD-DA is reconfigurable; the phase response at the reverse port can be simply controlled by adjusting the tap gain coefficients, and therefore the bandwidth as well as the amount of negative group delay can be manipulated. The proposed active NGD circuit is validated through theoretical explanation and experimental results.