A 120 watt GaN power amplifier MMIC utilizing harmonic tuning circuits for S-band applications

The design of a 120 Watt S-band GaN power amplifier MMIC is presented. The amplifier was designed using the 0.25um GaN on SiC process from GCS. At Vds= 40V, this two stage amplifier achieved greater than 135W saturated output power, with higher than 47% power added efficiency and with 22dB gain in the 2.8 - 3.5 GHz band. Additionally mid band output power of 195W was achieved at Vds=50V. This result is the highest power ever reported for a two stage GaN MMIC. The use of input and output harmonic terminations for broadband efficiency enhancement was demonstrated.