A Compact 50W GaN MMIC Power Amplifier for C-band applications

Abstract

This paper describes a C-band monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) high power amplifier (HPA) for Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) exploiting 0.25 $\mu$m GaN HEMT process on a SiC substrate. The 2-stage HPA has the output power of 50-Watt, power-added efficiency (PAE) of 45.5-49.6% and an associated power gain of 20 dB from 5 to 7 GHz. With a compact die size of 4.5 mm x 2.625 mm, the HPA exhibits the output power density of 4.23 W/mm2 showing the strong potential in SAR systems and others.