Three Stage 5-18.5 GHz High Gain and High Power Amplifier Based on 0.15 μm GaN Technology

This paper presents a wideband three stage monolithic HPA design and characterizations. It is realized on UMS 0.15 mu m GaN technology on SiC substrate. The main challenge was to find a good trade-off between RF characteristics (power, Power Added Efficiency, gain flatness and Input/Output return loss in a wide frequency range), thermal characteristics, and chip size: this was achieved by combining distributed (first stage) and reactively matched (second and third stages) architectures. The characterization results show an output power from 5.5 W to 9 W, an average PAE of 22% and a small signal gain higher than 30 dB over the frequency band 5-18.5 GHz. These performances are obtained in test fixture, and in Continuous Wave mode (CW).