A 4-W K-Band 40% PAE Three-Stage MMIC Power Amplifier

Abstract

This paper presents the design and measured continuous wave (CW) performance of a three-stage K-band MMIC power amplifier with greater than 4 W peak output power and a peak power added efficiency (PAE) ranging from 40–45 %. The output power exceeds 3.2 W over the frequency range of 18 to 24 GHz with less than 1.5 dB variation. The MMIC is implemented in Qorvo's 150-nm GaN on SiC process. The three stage architecture enables greater than 20dB of saturated gain from 18.5-24 GHz.