Broadband GaAs MESFET and GaN HEMT resistive feedback power amplifiers

Author

Krishnamurthy, Karthikeyan ; Vetury, Ramakrishna ; Keller, Stacia ; Mishra, Umesh ; Rodwell, Mark J.W. ; Long, Stephen I.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., California Univ., Santa Barbara, CA, USA

Volume

35

Issue

9

fYear

2000

Firstpage

1285

Lastpage

1292

Abstract

We report 0.2 to 6-GHz MMIC power amplifiers with 12-dB gain, over 23-dBm output power, and more than 25% power-added efficiency (PAE) in a GaAs MESFET technology offering 18 GHz f/sub /spl tau// and 12-V breakdown. These circuits have gain-bandwidth products of /spl sim/1.3/spl middot/f/sub /spl tau// and are more efficient than distributed power amplifiers. A first demonstration of similar circuits in GaN/AlGaN HEMT technology yielded 11-dB gain, 0.2 to 7.5-GHz bandwidth amplifiers with over 31.5-dBm output power and up to 15% PAE. With improved devices and models we expect significantly higher power from the GaN HEMT circuits.

Keywords

HEMT integrated circuits; III-V semiconductors; MESFET integrated circuits; MMIC power amplifiers; feedback amplifiers; gallium arsenide; gallium compounds; wideband amplifiers; 0.2 to 6 GHz; 0.2 to 7.5 GHz; 11 dB; 12 dB; 15 percent; 25 percent; GaAs; GaAs MESFET; GaN; GaN HEMT; broadband resistive feedback MMIC power amplifier; gain-bandwidth product; Broadband amplifiers; Circuits; Feedback; Gallium arsenide; Gallium nitride; HEMTs; MESFETs; MMICs; Power amplifiers; Power generation;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Solid-State Circuits, IEEE Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9200

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/4.868037

Filename

868037