journal article·2022-10-26Open access

A 7–13 GHz 10 W High-Efficiency MMIC Power Amplifier in 0.25 µm GaN HEMT Process

Aizhen Hu, Yongqing Leng, Xin Qiu, Tongyao Luan, Yatao Peng

Applied Sciences· Volume 12· Issue 21

Abstract

With the increase in applications of the millimeter wave spectrum for phased array radar systems, mobile 7–13 communication systems, and satellite systems, the demand for a wideband, high-efficiency, high-power monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) power amplifier (PA) is increasing. In this paper, a 7–13 GHz 10 W high-efficiency MMIC PA is designed. This amplifier consists of a two-stage circuit structure with two high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) cells for the driver stage and four HEMT cells for the power stage. To ensure high efficiency and a certain output power (Pout), both the driver–stage and power–stage transistors use a deep Class–AB bias. At the same time, in order to further improve the efficiency, low-loss and second–harmonic tuning techniques are used in the output and inter-stage matching networks, respectively. Finally, the electromagnetic simulation results show that within a frequency of 7–13 GHz, the amplifier achieves an average saturated continuous wave (CW) Pout of 40 dBm, a small signal gain of 14.5–15.5 dB, a power-added efficiency (PAE) of 30–46%, and the input and output return loss are better than 5 dB and 8 dB, respectively.
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Research context

OpenAlex topics: Advanced Power Amplifier Design · Radio Frequency Integrated Circuit Design · Microwave Engineering and Waveguides

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Affiliations

Institute of Microelectronics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100029, China

Zhengzhou Zhongke Institut of Integrated Circuit and System Application, Zhengzhou 450000, China

The State Key Laboratory of Analog and Mixed-Signal VLSI, Department of ECE, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Macau, Taipa, Macao 999078, China

Funding

National Natural Science Foundation of China · Henan Province Key R&D and Promotion Project (Science and Technology Research) · Zhengzhou Zhongke Institute of Integrated Circuit and System Application Research Dean Fund

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