High-power Density W-band MMIC Amplifiers using Graded-channel GaN HEMTs

• Published in: 2023 IEEE/MTT-S International Microwave Symposium - IMS 2023 pp. 97 - 100
• Main Authors: Moon, Jeong-Sun, Grabar, Bob, Wong, Joel, Tai, Joe, Ramos, Ignacio, Arkun, Erdem, Dao, Chuong, Fanning, Dave, Miller, Nicholas C., Elliott, Michael, Gilbert, Ryan, Venkatesan, Nivedhita, Fay, Patrick
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 11.06.2023
• Subjects: communications; Density measurement; GaN; HEMTs; Logic gates; Microwave amplifiers; Microwave communication; mm-wave; MMIC; Power amplifiers; Power system measurements; W-band
• DOI: 10.1109/IMS37964.2023.10188089

We report the W-band amplifier performance of graded-channel GaN HEMTs with f T and f MAX of 170 GHz and 347 GHz, respectively. Graded-channel GaN HEMTs with a gate periphery of 0.15 mm show a peak power-added-efficiency of 50% at 94 GHz at 2.2 W/mm associated power density after deembedding of the matching network loss of 0.3 dB. Pre-matched power cells with 0.6 mm total gate periphery yielded 2.1 W output power and 3.5 W/mm power density at 94 GHz. Finally, we report three-stage W-band amplifiers with a peak gain of 22.5 dB at 92.5 GHz, yielding 7.5 dB gain per stage.