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Institute of Korean Electrical and Electronics Engineers (한국전기전자학회)
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A 20 W GaN-based Power Amplifier MMIC for X-band Radar Applications

  • Received : 2019.03.02
  • Accepted : 2019.03.26
  • Published : 2019.03.31
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Abstract

In this paper, we demonstrated a power amplifier monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) for X-band radar applications. It utilizes commercial $0.25{\mu}m$ GaN-based high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) technology and delivers more than 20 W of output power. The developed GaN-based power amplifier MMIC has small signal gain of over 22 dB and saturated output power of over 43.3 dBm (21.38 W) in a pulse operation mode with pulse width of $200{\mu}s$ and duty cycle of 4% over the entire band of 9 to 10 GHz. The chip dimensions are $3.5mm{\times}2.3mm$, generating the output power density of $2.71W/mm^2$. Its power added efficiency (PAE) is 42.6-50.7% in the frequency bandwidth from 9 to 10 GHz. The developed GaN-based power amplifier MMIC is expected to be applied in a variety of X-band radar applications.

Keywords

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Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of the designed two- stage GaN-based power amplifier MMIC.

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Fig. 2. Chip photograph of the fabricated two-stage GaN-based power amplifier MMIC.

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Fig. 3. Measured S-parameters characteristics of the fabricated two-stage GaN-based power amplifier MMIC.

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Fig. 4. Measured output power and power gain characteristics of the fabricated two-stage GaN-based power amplifier MMIC.

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Fig. 5. Measured drain current characteristics of the fabricated two-stage GaN-based power amplifier MMIC.

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Fig. 6. Measured saturated output power and power added efficiency characteristics of the fabricated two-stage GaN-based power amplifier MMIC.

Table 1. The comparison of the developed X-band GaN-based power amplifier MMICs with other reported data.

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