A family of 1, 2 and 4-watt power amplifier MMICs for cost effective VSAT ground terminals

A complete family of cost effective power amplifier MMICs for Ka-band VSAT ground terminals has been developed. Taking advantage of a 6-inch, 0.15μm pHEMT process on 100-μm thick substrate, the amplifiers exhibit high performance at the lower processing cost: the single-ended, 3-stage amplifier MMIC has more than 27-dB gain at 30GHz and 1-watt saturated output power within a chip size of less than 3.9mm². Two versions of 2-watt power amplifiers, differing in bandwidth, have small signal gain of 24 and 21dB between 28 and 32GHz with excellent additional characteristics (36% PAE and 41-dBm OIP₃); their chip sizes are 9.5 and 7.4mm². Finally, a balanced power amplifier achieves 4watts from 28 to 30GHz, with a power added efficiency of more than 31% and 43-dBm OIP₃, in a chip area of 14mm². In term of power and gain density per chip area, these results are among the best reported for GaAs pHEMT on 100-μm substrates.