A Ka-Band CW 15.5W 15.6% Fractional Bandwidth GaN Power Amplifier MMIC Using Wideband BPF Inter-stage Matching Network

Abstract

This paper has reported a Ka-band 15.5W power amplifier Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuit (MMIC) using 0.15μm Gallium Nitride (GaN) HEMT with 15.6% fractional bandwidth. To realize a wideband power amplifier in Ka-band, a wideband band-pass filter (BPF) inter-stage matching network (ISMN) consists of the equivalent circuit parameters of inter-stage transistors is proposed. As a result, the fabricated 3-stage single-ended power amplifier MMIC using GaN-HEMT achieves a measured saturation output power (Psat) of 41.9 - 42.2dBm (15.5-16.6W) and peak power added efficiency (PAE) of 16.1 - 20.3% over 15.6% bandwidth in 26.5-31GHz under Continuous Wave (CW) operation. To the best of author’s knowledge, that 15.5W output power with 15.6% bandwidth is state-of-the art for GaN power amplifier MMIC under CW operation in Ka-band.