Ultra-wideband GaN HEMT Power Amplifier with Practical Mixed Lumped Approach Employing Real-Frequency Technique

Abstract

An ultra-wideband power amplifier (PA) design employing Real Frequency Technique (RFT) with Gallium Nitride high-electron-mobility-transistor (GaN HEMT) technology is presented. The practical implementation was done with combination of distributed and lumped elements (mixed lumped elements combination) for the need of industrial requirements for the small form factor and low cost. This is an attractive approach for Software Defined Radio (SDR) products to meet wide bandwidth range of 80-2200 MHz. The measured results of the prototype reported good performance over the bandwidth of the interest (i.e. power of 34 dBm to 43 dBm, efficiency about 39% to 69% and gain in the range of 11 dB to 18 dB), and reasonable agreement with the simulated data. According to author’s knowledge, these results are significant for single-ended GaN HEMT device for the wideband operation starting from low frequency 80 –2200 MHz.