A 6 W C-band high power MMIC amplifier for a space radar application

The design and measurement of a two stages C-band MMIC power amplifier to be used in a satellite Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) application is reported. Due to intensive non-linear optimization based on accurate models, very good overall performance have been achieved. The circuit provides more than 6 W of output power with an associated PAE of 50% at 2.5 dB gain compression.