A 0.5W 33%-PAE Ka-band Power Amplifier in 0.15µm GaAs

This paper reports a 27–32 GHz 0.5-W monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) power amplifier (PA) fabricated in 0.15-µm GaAs pHEMT technology. With proposed matching method, the three stage PA achieves a flat small signal gain of 23-25.5 dB across a wide band. The measured power added efficiency (PAE) reaches a peak of 36%. The insertion loss of the 4-to-1 output power combiner is optimized to be less than 0.4 dB, obtaining the output power of 28.5 dBm at 1-dB compression point (P
1dB
), The chip occupies an area of 2×2.7 mm
²
.