Design of an S-band quasi-MMIC Power Amplifier

This paper presents a quasi-MMIC (q-MMIC) Class-AB power amplifier from 3.4 GHz to 3.8 GHz. The active device is fabricated in a 0.25-µm GaN high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) process, while all passive circuits are fabricated in a high breakdown voltage GaAs integrated passive device (IPD) process. Bondwire is adopted to connect the passive circuits with the active devices. For verification, a power amplifier occupying an area of 4.0×1.6 mm
²
is designed and fabricated. Experimental results show that a saturated power of 39.5-40.5 dBm, a power added efficiency (PAE) of 38.7%- 47.7% and a saturated gain of 10 dB from 3.5-3.9GHz. For a 20-MHz modulated signal, a PAE of 21% with good linearity after linearization is obtained at an average output power of 33.4 dBm.