Low cost Ka-band 7W GaAs PHEMT based HPA with GaN PHEMT equivalent performance

This paper describes a very low cost MMIC high power amplifier (HPA) with output power of over 7W. The MMIC was fabricated using a GaAs PHEMT process with a state-of-the-art compact die area of 13.7mm². The HPA MMIC contains a phase and amplitude compensated output power combiner and super low loss phase compensated inter-stage matching networks. A four stage amplifier demonstrated commercially available GaN PHEMT based HPA equivalent performance with 7W saturated output power and 24dB small signal gain from 27.5GHz to 30GHz with peak output power of 8.3W and power added efficiency (PAE) of 27%. This low cost MMIC HPA achieved approximately 10-times lower production cost than GaN PHEMT based MMIC HPAs.