A 6–14 GHz GaN Power Amplifier With 45.3 dBm Output Power Using Real-to-Real Matching Technique

This paper presents a high-power monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) power amplifier (PA) using 0.25 <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$\mu \mathrm{m}$</tex> Gallium Nitride (GaN) high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) technology, operating in the frequency range of 6–14 GHz. A real-to-real output matching network is employed to achieve impedance matching at a fundamental level. Compared to traditional approaches, the proposed design method provides the advantage of simplicity, especially for MMIC designs. Furthermore, active compensation for gain roll-off is implemented in the input matching network and inter-stage matching network to achieve excellent small-signal gain flatness. The PA, with a chip size of <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$4.05\times 2.44\text{mm}^{2}$</tex>, exhibits an output power of 45.3 to 46.7 dBm, with a power-added efficiency ranging from 27.2% to 32.5% at a drain voltage of 28 V.