A Decade-Bandwidth Distributed Power Amplifier MMIC Using 0.25 μm GaN HEMT Technology

This study presents a 2-20 GHz monolithic distributed power amplifier (DPA) using a $0.25{\mu}m$ AlGaN/GaN on SiC high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) technology. The gate width of the HEMT was selected after considering the input capacitance of the unit cell that guarantees decade bandwidth. To achieve high output power using small transistors, a 12-stage DPA was designed with a non-uniform drain line impedance to provide optimal output power matching. The maximum operating frequency of the proposed DPA is above 20 GHz, which is higher than those of other DPAs manufactured with the same gate-length process. The measured output power and power-added efficiency of the DPA monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) are 35.3-38.6 dBm and 11.4%-31%, respectively, for 2-20 GHz.