Title :
Class F GaN power amplifiers for CubeSat communication links
Author :
Chin, Andrew ; Clark, Christopher
Author_Institution :
Aerosp. Corp., Los Angeles, CA, USA
Abstract :
The Aerospace Corporation (Aerospace) CubeSat program has designed a 10 Watt, inverse Class F Gallium Nitride (GaN) power amplifier currently installed and in use in CubeSat mobile ground stations. At 915 MHz and 2 dB compression, the amplifier has 17.0 dB of gain, 40.4 dBm output power, and 83.4% Power Added Efficiency (PAE). This amplifier was designed in Advanced Design System (ADS) with a vendor transistor model and optimized transmission line matching networks. A miniaturized lumped element version is currently being designed for implementation in future CubeSats. Such an amplifier will yield significant power savings and improved link margin for a system with very tight size, weight, and power (SWaP) restrictions.
Keywords :
III-V semiconductors; UHF power amplifiers; gallium compounds; mobile radio; satellite communication; wide band gap semiconductors; ADS; CubeSat communication links; CubeSat mobile ground stations; GaN; PAE; advanced design system; aerospace corporation CubeSat program; class F power amplifiers; efficiency 83.4 percent; frequency 915 MHz; gain 17.0 dB; improved link margin; inverse class F gallium nitride power amplifier; miniaturized lumped element version; optimized transmission line matching networks; power 10 W; power added efficiency; vendor transistor model; Gain; Gallium nitride; Harmonic analysis; Power amplifiers; Power generation; Radio frequency; Transistors;
Conference_Titel :
Aerospace Conference, 2012 IEEE
Conference_Location :
Big Sky, MT
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4577-0556-4
DOI :
10.1109/AERO.2012.6187136
