A 47-50 GHz 3 W MMIC Power Amplifier Using 100 nm Gallium Nitride Technology

This paper presents the design and test results of a 47-50 GHz power amplifier MMIC based on a 100 nm gate length in-house GaN technology under development. The Q-band HPA device was designed using a preliminary design kit inherited from GH15 equation set, validated with Load-Pull at 45 GHz and extrapolated to higher frequencies. The MMIC exhibits an output power of 4 W at 50 GHz and greater than 3W over the 47-50 GHz band with Power Added Efficiency (PAE) higher than 25% and a linear gain higher than 21 dB at V
DD
=15 V. According to the author’s knowledge, the presented GaN HPA results are the best among the ones published for frequencies up to 50 GHz. This paper contributes therefore to the state of the art.