A 2.5-GHz GaN power amplifier design and modeling by circuit-electromagnetic co-simulation

In this paper a 2.5-GHz GaN power amplifier is presented. The amplifier is designed to achieve unconditional stability in the frequency range from DC to 6 GHz. The circuit-EM co-simulation model of the complete amplifier, including transistor model, passive components, connector model and the EM model of the critical parts of the design is created. The impact of each component is addressed. The amplifier is processed and measured, the measurements are compared to simulations and a good agreement is achieved. The amplifier parameters power added efficiency (PAE), drain efficiency (DE) and IP3 are measured and compared to results published in open literature.