A Ka-band High-OP1dB Power Amplifier in 0.15-μm GaN Process for 5G Base Station and Satellite Communications Applications

In this paper, we present a Ka-band power amplifier (PA) in WIN Semiconductors 0.15-μm GaN high electron-mobility transistor (HEMT) process. The PA is constructed of three cascaded common-source amplifiers, with a high-pass filter at the input to stabilize the transistors. The small signal measured results show that it exhibits a 3-dB bandwidth of 5.5 GHz from 26.5 to 32 GHz. The peak gain occurs at 30.3 GHz with 20.3 dB of gain. The measured large signal, on the other hand, shows that the PA achieves 32.3-dBm Psat, 31.4-dBm OP
1dB
, 27.7% PAEpeak, and 23.3% PAE
1dB
.