Design aspects and performance of cost-efficient packaged power amplifiers

Abstract

The design aspects and performance of a cost efficient 2-Watt Ku-band power amplifier are presented. The circuit is fabricated at the least spending with 0.5-μm GaAs PHEMT technology and standard plastic QFN package. Thanks to efficient design approaches, this compact packaged power amplifier MMIC (7.1mm2) demonstrates a measured linear gain averaging 30 dB across the full PtP Ku-band, and delivers more than +32 dBm CW power at 1-dB gain compression (P1dB), and +33 dBm output power in saturation (Psat). Typical measured OIP3 is greater than +41 dBm. To further reduce the cost and minimize component count in RF module, the PA MMIC integrates a temperature compensated on-chip power detector with 45-dB dynamic range for output power monitoring, together with on-chip EOS/ESD protections to ±400 V CDM for rugged and reliable operation. The overall PA performance, covering both the 13 and 15 GHz PtP bands with a single circuit, competes favorably well to other more advanced solutions reported in the literature or available on the market. Furthermore, the presented compact design considerations can be applied to greatly reduce manufacturing cost in other circuits and technologies (e.g. GaN).