10W power amplifier and 3W transmit/receive module with 3 dB NF in Ka band using a 100nm GaN/Si process

• Published in: 2017 IEEE Compound Semiconductor Integrated Circuit Symposium (CSICS) pp. 1 - 4
• Main Authors: Gasmi, Ahmed, El Kaamouchi, Majid, Poulain, Julien, Wroblewski, Bertrand, Lecourt, Francois, Dagher, Gulnar, Frijlink, Peter, Leblanc, Remy
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01-10-2017
• Subjects: Gain; Gallium nitride; Low Noise Amplifier; Microwave amplifiers; Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuit; Noise figure; PHEMT; Power Amplifier; Power amplifiers; Power generation; Switch; Switches; Transmit/Receive chip
• ISSN: 2374-8443
• DOI: 10.1109/CSICS.2017.8240431

This paper presents two Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuits (MMIC) designed and fabricated with the same 100 nm Gallium Nitride on Silicon (GaN/Si) millimeter wave process, demonstrating the excellent multipurpose capability of this technology. The first circuit is a 29-33 GHz power amplifier, presenting 10 W of output power in pulsed operation and 8 W is CW operation. The second MMIC is a 26-34 GHz Transmit/Receive chip (T/R chip), including on the same chip a Low Noise Amplifier (LNA), a Power Amplifier (PA) and a SPDT switch. In the 28-34 GHz frequency bandwidth, this T/R chip, including the switch losses, presents an output power of 35-36 dBm and a Noise Figure of 2.7 dB with an associated gain of 18 dB for the receive and transmit paths.