Design of 6–18-GHz High-Power Amplifier in GaAs pHEMT Technology

This paper presents a design procedure for a wideband 6–18-GHz monolithic microwave integrated circuit high-power amplifier (HPA) in 0.25-<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu \text{m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> AlGaAs-InGaAs pHEMT technology. The design is mainly focused on the realization of the passive circuits to provide the required low-loss and wideband impedance transformation networks. The two-stage GaAs HPA achieves an average output power of 39.6 dBm and a peak output power of 40.5 dBm at 11 GHz, in pulsed mode operation, with a small-signal gain of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$S_{21}>10$ </tex-math></inline-formula> dB over the entire bandwidth. The average power added efficiency (PAE) is 22%, with a peak PAE of 29% at 11 GHz. The HPA chip occupies an area of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$5\times 3.6~\mathrm {mm}^{2}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>. The achieved output power and the corresponding power density of 0.51 W/<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathrm {mm}^{2}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> are amongst the highest reported values in wideband GaAs HPAs.

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