GaN Technology for Millimeter Wave Power Amplifiers

Gallium nitride's (GaN) superior material properties offers revolutionary performance for millimeter wave power amplifiers in terms of output power, power added efficiency, linearity, frequency, bandwidth, gain flatness, and noise. NGAS has developed a 0.2um GaN HEMT technology which demonstrates 3.6 W/mm at 40 GHz with 37% power-added-efficiency (PAE) and 8.4 dB associated gain. RF driven thermally accelerated life testing has demonstrated reliability in excess of 60 million hours median-time-to-failure at 150C junction temperature. At 55 GHz this process has demonstrated 2.8 W/mm at 23% PAE. This capability is 4 - 8 times higher power than competing GaAs HEMT technology.