X-band 10W MMIC high-gain power amplifier with up to 60% PAE

This paper describes a power amplifier operating at X-band demonstrating 61% power added efficiency (PAE) at 10 GHz associated with 14W output power in CW mode. The design uses a 0.15μm GaN 3MI process from TriQuint™. The devices operate at a peak power density of 3.8W/mm at 10 GHz with a PAE higher than 48% over a 500-MHz bandwidth. The two-stage MMIC PA has a saturated gain of 19 dB at peak efficiency. The total size of the chip is 9.2mm
²
.