High Efficiency Ku-Band 13 W GaN HEMT HPA

This paper reports on a Ku-band high-power amplifier (HPA) monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) on 150-nm GaN-SiC high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) process, which exhibits high output power (13 W Psat) and high efficiency (45 % peak PAE) under pulse simulation with 100 $\mu\mathrm{s}$ period and 10 % duty cycle. By employing wideband matching networks (MNs), the proposed HPA achieves 39.2 ‘” 41.2 dBm Pout and 35.7% ~ 45.4% PAE from 14.0 to 18.0 GHz. Power gain exceeds 17 dB in the operating band. The HPA chip dimensions are 2.55 mm by 1.3 mm. These results provide the potential for this HP A to be applied in satellite communications (SATCOM).