Design, Analysis and Evaluation of a Broadband High-Power Amplifier for Ka-Band Frequencies

This paper reports on the analysis, development and results of a wideband High Power Amplifier (HPA) covering a large segment of the Ka-Band. The presented circuit has been manufactured in a GaN-on-SiC process with a gate length of 100 nm with three different process variants. It reaches a linear gain of well over 22 dB and an output power between 6 and 9 W in the band of 26 to 35 GHz, which equals a fractional bandwidth of over 29 %, while also maintaining a state-of-the-art power-added efficiency. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the most broadband HPA over 7 W published in this frequency band.