A gallium-nitride push-pull microwave power amplifier

A highly efficient linear, broad-band AlGaN-GaN high electron-mobility transistor (HEMT) push-pull microwave power amplifier has been achieved using discrete devices. Instrumental was a low-loss planar three-coupled-line balun with integrated biasing. Using two 1.5-mm GaN HEMTs, a push-pull amplifier yielded 42% power-added efficiency with 28.5-dBm input power at 5.2 GHz, and a 3-dB bandwidth of 4-8.5 GHz was achieved with class-B bias. The output power at 3-dB gain compression was 36 dBm under continuous-wave operation. Along with the high efficiency, good linearity was obtained compared to single-ended operation. The second harmonic content of the amplifier was more than 30 dB down over the 4-8.5-GHz band, and a two-tone excitation measurement gave an input third-order intercept point of 31.5 dBm at 8 GHz. These experimental results and an analysis of the periodic load presented by the output balun suggest the plausibility of broad-band push-pull operation for microwave systems with frequency diversity.