A C-Band GaN Single Chip Front-End for SAR Applications

This paper describes the design and experimental characterization of a C-Band Gallium Nitride (GaN) Single Chip Front End (SCFE) designed for Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) systems. The SCFE is composed by a three stage High Power Amplifier (HPA), a Single Pole Double Throw switch (SPDT) and a three stage Low Noise Amplifier (LNA). The MMIC has been measured in both transmit and receive mode under small- and large-signal conditions showing interesting results. In particular, a small-signal gain around 35 dB with an associated noise figure of about 3.2 dB @T
amb
in receive mode were achieved, whereas, in transmit mode, 46 dBm of output power and 30% of power added efficiency were obtained at the antenna port reference plane. The chip is optimized to work in the 5.25-5.57 GHz operating band and occupies an area of 7x7 mm
²
.