3–20 GHz GaN MMIC Power Amplifier Design Through a COUT Compensation Strategy

This paper presents the design approach for a compact, single-stage, wideband MMIC power amplifier. A method is proposed to compensate the output capacitance of the active device over a frequency range as wide as possible, with minimum impact on the achievable output power, that leads to a 2- element compensating network. A 3- section transformer is then adopted for a real-to-real transformation. The CW characterization shows output power higher than 32dBm and drain efficiency between 35% and 45%, over a fractional bandwidth of 148%, from 3 GHz to 20 GHz.