An Ultra-compact 14.9-W X-Band GaN MMIC Power Amplifier

This paper presents an ultra-compact 14.9 W X-band GaN power amplifier (PA) which is designed by using WIN (TM) 0.25-mu m GaN-on-SiC HEMT technology. To design the compact PA, a simple four-way power combining structure is used to obtain high output power per area ratio. The pulsed mode measurements demonstrate a saturated output power of 14.9 W and maximal power added efficiency (PAE) of 37% in a chip area of 2.1x1.65 mm(2). The proposed PA achieves a power per area ratio of 4.3 W/mm(2) which is the best figure of merit (FoM) among recently designed X-band GaN PA monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs).