An Envelope Tracking oriented, 17-20GHz, Average 64QAM Modulated 2W, PAE>37%, OBO 8dB GaN MMIC Power Amplifier

This article presents the design and the realization of a 4W reactively-matched Power Amplifier (PA), in GaN MMIC technology operating in the 17-20 GHz band. The design has been oriented to be used with Envelope Tracking (ET) systems. The designed PA for Envelope Tracking (PA-ET) is a two-stage reactively-matched PA and it is based on the use of three power transistors from the UMS GaN GH15 technology. Large signal characterizations with 64 QAM modulation show that PA-ET provides an average dynamic output power $\left( {{{\bar P}_{outdyn}}} \right)$ greater than 2 W (33 dBm) associated to an average dynamic Power Added Efficiency $\left( {\overline {PA{E_{dyn}}} } \right)$ greater than 37 % and an insertion gain (G
Idyn
) greater than 11 dB in the 17-20 GHz band. The ET improves efficiency performance by 21 points compared to a PA using the same technology with fixed bias.