Design and implementation of class-F GaN HEMT power amplifier for S-band radar

The increased development in the telecommunication domain, the telecom equipments are required to operate at high speeds and these equipments consumes high amount of power. Hence, increasing the durability of the battery is of great concern. The front-end equipment of the wireless system is the Power Amplifier (PA). Most of the wireless communication TV transmission, radar RF power amplifier are considered as one of the most critical design block. An implementation of class-F amplifier using Gallium Nitride (GaN) which belongs to the family of High Electron Mobility Transistor (HEMT) is realized in this paper. The GaN technology is employed because of wider bandgap and higher carrier concentration. Elements having wide bandgap, exhibits high breakdown voltage as well as high power density. This facilitates a transistor of small physical dimension to generate high output power. Here, the design of class-F amplifier with harmonic load network is presented using microstrip transmission lines. The class-F PA for a frequency of 2.4GHz is designed and operated in linear region using ADS [1], [10], [11]. The transistor model, CGH40010F Cree having a rating of 10W is used for the proposed design. The class-F amplifier implemented in this work can produce an output power of 41.818dBm which is 15.19W, with higher PAE of 78.8% and a gain of 20dB. Electromagnetic simulator is used to get accurate results and to verify the S-parameters. The simulator computes the response of the proposed structure from the physical geometry using Maxwell's equations. From the simulation results, the input reflection coefficient is obtained as −13.872dB and output reflection coefficient is − 14.017dB. The design was able to achieve a gain of 20dB and output power is obtained as 14.44W with 75.29% efficiency.