Fully monolithic 8 watt Ku-band high power amplifier

This paper presents the design and performance of a compact MMIC high power amplifier operating at Ku-band. The amplifier was fabricated using TriQuint's 3MI 0.25 /spl mu/m pHEMT production process on 100 /spl mu/m substrate. This balanced three-stage power amplifier with chip size of 11.21 mm/sup 2/ (2.872 mm/spl times/3.907 mm) demonstrated 39 dBm (8 Watt) saturated output power with 22% power added efficiency from 13.5 GHz to 15 GHz and greater than 22 dB small signal gain. This HPA delivered among the best output power densities (708.5 mW/mm/sup 2/) from a single MMIC chip at Ku-band reported to date.