Millimeter Wave GaN MMIC Technologies for Next-gen Defense Applications

This paper describes our efforts to advance GaN MMIC and solid state power amplifier capability to meet the demands of next-gen defense electronic systems. Systems increasingly require higher operating frequency, wider instantaneous bandwidth, and higher output power all within in heavily size, weight, and power (SWaP) constrained payloads. This is pushing advancement of GaN device technologies to shorter gate length and driving innovations in both broadband MMIC designs and small form factor amplifier modules. In this work, we leverage 180 nm and 140 nm GaN technology to demonstrate MMIC chipsets covering the 4-18 GHz, 32-38 GHz, and 26-40 GHz frequency bands, achieving power as high as 40W and exceeding the current state of the art for output power per chip. The power amplifier MMICs were integrated into broadband, small form factor modules that offer state of the art performance in a 2.9" x 1.4" module footprint.