Design and characterization of a highly linear 3 GHz GaN HEMT amplifier

In this paper a highly linear amplifier using an in-house gallium nitride (GaN) high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) technology is presented. A 3 dB bandwidth of 2.7-3.6 GHz with a maximum gain of 18 dB was measured. The output third-order intercept point (OIP3) was measured to 39 dBm with a maximum power consumption of 2.1 W. With a reduction of power consumption to 1 W the noise figure was improved by 0.6 dB while the OIP3 was degraded 3 dB.