Modeling and Simulation of Discrete Silicon Carbide Integrated Passive Devices in High-Power RF Amplifiers

The benefits of using discrete Silicon Carbide (SiC) integrated passive devices (IPDs) in the pre-match component of high-power RF amplifiers is examined. Through accurate modeling and simulation, the losses in both connected and unconnected passive components are correlated with the amplifier performance metrics such as efficiency and gain. A comparison of the losses in IPDs made on low-resistivity Silicon (Si) substrates show that gain and efficiency can be improved by substitution from Si to SiC IPDs. Both simulation and measured data on fabricated amplifier prototypes show a 2dB improvement in gain, and 2% improvement in efficiency at 3.8GHz and 85 W average output power for the amplifier product using SiC IPDs.