An X-band 500W Internally Matched High Power GaN Amplifier

In this paper the design, implementation, and experimental results of an X-band 500W GaN-HEMT power amplifier (PA) are presented. The device consists of four GaN power dies of 18-mm gate periphery together with input and output 2-stage impedance transformer networks. The device exhibited saturated output power of 500 W with power gain of 9.0 dB over the frequency range of 8.2-8.8 GHz, operating at 50 V drain voltage under pulsed condition of 50us pulse width and 5% duty ratio. In addition, the highest saturated output power reached 580 W with power gain of 9.6 dB at 8.5 GHz. This is the highest output power GaN HEMT ever reported for X-band.