High Power Wide-Band GaN Amplifiers: Industrial Design and Challenges

Many advanced industrial applications demand high power amplifiers (HPAs) with ever greater power across a wideband, within a small size, and with high reliability and long life. In addition, for a wideband GaN HPA, withstanding high output mismatch, overcoming inherent limitations, efficient thermal management, and achieving linearization and modulation requirements across a wide-bandwidth raise many design challenges. This paper presents the practical design and assembling difficulties with industrial solutions, and the development of very high power GaN PAs with decade bandwidth, and delivering high CW (P1dB) power to 1 kW (close to Psat), overcoming the inherent limitations of GaN devices.