Broadband high efficiency GaN discrete and MMIC power amplifiers over 30 – 2700 MHz range

This paper presents the design and the measured results of two GaN power amplifiers designed to operate from 30 MHz to 2.7 GHz. One design is a fully integrated non-uniform distributed power amplifier (NDPA) MMIC. NDPA achieves typical small signal gain of 20 dB and produces 10W of output power with 50% or better PAE across the frequency band. The other design is a hybrid discrete packaged amplifier with bridged-T input matching. The packaged amplifier demonstrated 5W of output power and 40-50% PAE across 1 - 2.7 GHz range. Both design techniques can be leveraged in achieving the next generation broadband high efficiency power amplifiers.