A Derating-Rules Compliant Ka-Band GaN-on-Si Power Amplifier Designed for Highly Reliable Satellite Applications

The present work shows a thermal-aware MMIC HPA design approach that could be adopted when designing GaN/Si amplifiers for space applications, where reliability is a prime concern. It is demonstrated how thermal requirements for space applications limit device performance in the case of GaN/Si technology. On the other hand, following a thermal load-pull approach, it is also demonstrated how, with proper selection of the load termination, GaN/Si technology is able to achieve competitive results at Ka-band also when enforcing space derating rules.