A 20-watt Ka-band GaN high power amplifier MMIC

A Ka-band high power amplifier MMIC developed from 0.18μm gate-length AlGaN/GaN HEMT on SiC is presented. The MMIC chip was measured on-wafer across 29GHz to 31GHz under pulsed bias condition. At VDD=28V, the MMIC achieved an output power of 19W to 21W. To the authors' best knowledge, this is the highest output power ever reported for GaN high power amplifier MMIC at Ka-band. The 2-stage amplifier GaN MMIC has 10dB linear gain and a die-size of 4.0mm × 5.5mm. The MMIC can realize high power Solid-State Power Amplifier (SSPA) for Ka-band.