A 4W GaN power amplifier for C-band application

In this contribution, design of a 4W GaN HEMT power amplifier (PA) for C-band application for instance of Car to Car communications will be reported. The PA design procedure considers the characteristics of digital modulated signals planned to be used in C-Band. Such signals have a high peak to average ratio (PAR), which requires highly efficient and linear PA. A 4W low cost and small size class-AB PA has been designed and fabricated for the 5.6 to 5.9 GHz band using GaN on Si. The designed PA has maximum output power of 36 dBm with 8 dB of gain. An ACPR of -30.5 dBc has been measured using a 64 QAM signal of 9.6 dB PAR at an average output power of 27 dBm with power added efficiency (PAE) of about 18%.