A Highly Survivable 3-7 GHz GaN Low-Noise Amplifier

A highly rugged low-noise GaN MMIC amplifier is presented that operates in the frequency band 3-7 GHz. A noise figure NF below 2.3 dB is measured from 3.5 to 7 GHz, with NF < 1.8 dB between 5 and 7 GHz. The survivability of the LNA was assessed by several stress-tests, injecting in the input up to 36dBm at 4 GHz for 16 hours. To the authors knowledge, these are the most severe survivability tests for these circuits reported in the literature so far