A 72% PAE, 95-W, single-chip GaN FET S-band inverse class-F power amplifier with a harmonic resonant circuit

This paper describes a high-efficiency, high-output-power GaN power amplifier for S-band radar applications. The amplifier uses an inverse class-F configuration for high efficiency. The matching circuit includes a 2^nd harmonic resonant circuit to compensate for GaN FET parasitics. The developed GaN single-chip power amplifier delivers output power of 95 W with power added efficiency (PAE) of 72% and high linear gain of 19.8 dB at 2.6 GHz. To the best of our knowledge, this is the highest efficiency for S-band power amplifiers ever reported with nearly 100-W output power.