A GaN differential oscillator with improved harmonic performance

Author

Sanabria, C. ; Hongtao Xu ; Heikman, S. ; Mishra, U.K. ; York, R.A.

Author_Institution

Electr. & Comput. Eng. Dept., Univ. of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

Volume

15

Issue

7

fYear

2005

fDate

7/1/2005 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

463

Lastpage

465

Abstract

The first AlGaN/GaN HEMT based differential oscillator is reported. The MMIC oscillates at a frequency of 4.16 GHz and provides 22.9 dBm of power from one side at a biasing of V/sub gs/-1 V and V/sub ds/20 V. The HEMTs each have a 0.7 μm×200 μm gate. The second harmonic is 45 dB below the carrier and the third harmonic is more than 70 dB below the carrier. To our knowledge, this is the best reported harmonic performance for a GaN oscillator. The oscillator efficiency is between 4% and 9.4% depending on bias. The measured phase noise is -86.3 dBc and -115.7 dBc at offsets of 100 kHz and 1 MHz respectively. The phase noise at a 1 MHz offset is similar to the noise performance of FET based differential oscillators in other technologies.

Keywords

HEMT circuits; III-V semiconductors; MMIC oscillators; aluminium compounds; gallium compounds; wide band gap semiconductors; -1 V; 0.7 micron; 1 MHz; 100 kHz; 20 V; 200 micron; 4.16 GHz; AlGaN-GaN; HEMT; MMIC; differential oscillator; harmonic performance; high electron-mobility transistor; phase noise; Aluminum gallium nitride; FETs; Frequency; Gallium nitride; HEMTs; MMICs; Noise measurement; Oscillators; Phase measurement; Phase noise; AlGaN; GaN; cross-coupled; differential; harmonics; high electron-mobility transistor (HEMT); oscillator;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Microwave and Wireless Components Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1531-1309

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LMWC.2005.851563

Filename

1458810