Ku-band hybrid GaN block upconverter for very small aperture terminals

Within this paper the development and design of a hybrid Ku-band block upconverter (BUC) with a GaN-HEMT amplifier is shown. The BUC is supposed to work within a very small aperture terminal (VSAT) where more often higher output power levels are required. Therefore the authors already developed GaN-HEMT power amplifiers up to Pout= 70 W. In here an integration of a 10 W amplifier within a newly developed BUC is shown that comes along with a small size and low weight, paired with a low amount of dissipated power. Additionally the BUC is equipped with a linearization technique that automatically improves the spectral regrowth for common modulation schemes (QPSK, 8PSK), as well as for future high order modulation (DVB-S2X, 5G). Finally the BUC is tested with a VSAT in a satellite link and demonstrates its function with up to data rates of 1 Mbit/s.