Abstract:

A high power density monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) power amplifier is presented for W band application. The chip is fabricated using the 100 nm GaN high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) technology on a 50 μm SiC substrate. The amplifier is designed for a high gain and high output power with three stage topology and low-loss impedance matching networks designed with high and low characteristic impedance micro-strips and metal-insulator-metal (MIM) capacitors. And quarter-wave micro-strips are employed for the DC bias networks, while the power amplifier is also fully integrated with bias networks on the wafer.Measurement results show that, at the drain bias of 15 V, the amplifier MMIC achieves a typical small signal gain of 20 dB within the frequency range of 88~98 GHz. Moreover, the saturated output power is more than 250 mW at the continuous-wave mode. At 98 GHz, a peak output power of 405 mW has been achieved with an associated power gain of 13 dB and a power-added-efficiency of 14.4%. Thus, this GaN MMIC delivers a corresponding peak power density of 3.4 W/mm at the W band.

Key words: GaN high electron mobility transistor, W-band, power amplifier, micro-strips, monolithic microwave integrated circuit