State of the Art Transformer Enabled 2–20 GHz GaN MMIC Overview

Ahstract- This paper presents an overview of state of the art 2 – 20 GHz GaN MMIC power amplifiers which are all fabricated on 100 μm silicon carbide using Qorvo's QGaN15 released process. Two unique two-stage amplifiers will be discussed. First, a two-stage 10 W power amplifier is presented which introduces a decade bandwidth output impedance transformer enabling substantially higher output power at lower DC operating voltage which enables substantial bandwidth and power added efficiency improvement relative to prior state of the art. Finally, a 20 W power amplifier is presented which introduces a decade bandwidth transformer-based power combiner which enables monolithic, broadband combining of core amplifiers to further push the boundaries of achievable output power.