A 10 W X-Band Balanced Power Amplifier with Harmonic Rejection for SATCOM Applications

This work presents a balanced X-band power amplifier (PA) architecture that uses Wilkinson wideband hybrid couplers to split input power to two commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) Gallium Nitride (GaN) monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) PAs and combine their output powers. The presented balanced PA manufactured on a Rogers 4003C substrate yields increased small signal gain and saturated output power under CW operation compared to the single MMIC PA used in the design under pulsed operation. The presented PA operates from 7.5 GHz to 11.5 GHz, has a maximum small signal gain of 36.3 dB, a maximum saturated power out of 40.0 dBm, and a maximum power added efficiency (PAE) of 38%.