34 dBm GaN Doherty Power Amplifier for Ka-band satellite downlink

This paper presents the design and experimental characterization of a Doherty power amplifier cell targeting the satellite Ka-band downlink. The foreseen application is in a combined power amplifier, where two Doherty cells are combined in parallel to achieve power levels of the order of 6 W. The measured performance of the DPA cell well compares with the present state-of-the-art for the application, with output power in excess of 34 dBm in the 17.3-20.3 GHz band, gain around 12 dB, and efficiency higher than 25% and 20%, at saturation and 6 dB output power back-off, respectively.