A K-band low cost plastic packaged high linearity Power Amplifier with integrated ESD protection for Multi-band Telecom applications

The design and performance of cost effective packaged linear power amplifier in K-band is reported in this paper. Based on a specific characterizations and model developments done on a standard 6-inch 0.15-mum GaAs power pHEMT technology, a high linearity-oriented design has been done and is described. Thanks to this work, excellent linearity performances have been achieved. This power amplifier exhibits 19 dB linear gain in the 17 to 27 GHz frequency band with 28.5 dBm CW output power at 1 dB gain compression and 29.5 dBm in saturated mode. The output referred third-order intercept point (OIP₃) exceeds 38 dBm over the whole frequency band. As this amplifier was developed and was proposed in SMD package (standard 32L-QFN5X5 plastic molded package), it integrates an on-chip ESD protection. This makes this component easy to use in standard SMT assembly lines and significantly contributes to the reduction of the overall module cost.