Hey guys!
So I was finally able to do some testing, I ordered some cheap boards and got my hands to work. I found a couple issues to which I scrapped through datasheets to figure them out but can't seem to pinpoint the issue.
A little background: I wanted to use P2 (bottom connector) to power the board at 15V, providing 5V to opamp, attenuator, and dip switch to control attenuator, by using a resistive voltage divider (I should've use a voltage regulator though). However, I found that this bias tee was going to be incorporated to a system that provides 12V, 5V and 3.3V as well as I2C to control devices. So, in order to accommodate that implementation better, I used the 12V and 5V supply on board and the I2C to control the bias T.
Now, my issue comes to the amp drawing too much current from the 5V supply, making the inductor on the supply burning hot after a couple seconds. For reasons, I can't post the supply itself but its composed of a 12V input into a 5V regulator, out into an inductor and some more circuitry before hitting a series of multiple 10 pin connectors (6 connector for power, 4 for data).
I know this amp is suppose to draw somewhere between 150 and 170mA, but it requires close to 1A (about 850mA) just to get a jumpstart. Also, my 5V trace is grounded for some reason. Once I take off the amp from the PCB, 5V stops being grounded which makes me think that the output is being shorted to ground. Is this usual on this Amp? Do you guys have any other recommendations on Amps I could use? This one is not for an antenna but for various systems ranging from 100MHz to somewhere around 3-4GHz.
Tested the inductor on a separate board and worked just fine up to 4GHz, -10dB return loss at that point, then it goes close to -5dB after that. Insertion loss is pretty flat up to 4GHz as well, after that, I could see dips coming close to -3dB. That makes me think the FR-4 I am using might be the culprit since this board is super basic (inductor, 1uF coupling cap and 3 decoupling caps on DC trace on the back). I attach a picture of it as well.
Thanks!