Class F GaN power amplifiers for CubeSat communication links

The Aerospace Corporation (Aerospace) CubeSat program has designed a 10 Watt, inverse Class F Gallium Nitride (GaN) power amplifier currently installed and in use in CubeSat mobile ground stations. At 915 MHz and 2 dB compression, the amplifier has 17.0 dB of gain, 40.4 dBm output power, and 83.4% Power Added Efficiency (PAE). This amplifier was designed in Advanced Design System (ADS) with a vendor transistor model and optimized transmission line matching networks. A miniaturized lumped element version is currently being designed for implementation in future CubeSats. Such an amplifier will yield significant power savings and improved link margin for a system with very tight size, weight, and power (SWaP) restrictions.

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