Sirenza claims that it has produced the first GaN power amplifier (PA) with an output power above 2 W and a noise factor (NF) below 1 dB, encompassing the 0.2 to 8 GHz range.
Kevin Kobayashi, executive engineering fellow at the Broomfield, Colorado, headquartered company, presented the details of the AlGaN/GaN-SiC HEMT at the International Microwave Symposium in Hawaii on June 5.
Talking to compoundsemiconductor.net, Kobayashi said, “We have been investigating this technology for commercial as well as military applications.”
“Some of the potential applications include cellular base station transceivers, WiMAX and CATV.”
The MOCVD approach used to produce the 1.7mm x 1.7mm device was performed at Northrop Grumman Space and Technology (NGST).
At 12 V and 200 mA the MMIC PA recorded an NF of approximately 0.5 dB. At 15 V and 400 mA the NF was in the range of 0.7 to 0.9 dB.
“What is exceptional about this amplifier is the fact that it exploits both the low noise and high power capability of the GaN HEMT device technology,” explained Kobayashi.
Maximum power density of the device was reported as 2.2 W/mm. At lower voltages, which improve reliability, this figure fell to 1.62 W/mm.
Kobayashi seems confident that these figures will be reproducible in commercial devices. “We describe fully monolithic solutions which suggest reproducibility and scalability for MMIC applications,” he explained.
“Until now MMIC matched low-noise amplifiers have been limited to linear output of 1 W or less and noise figures above 1 dB over a multi-octave bandwidth in the S- and C-band frequency range,“ Kobayashi said.
“The noise figure and dynamic range are remarkable for any technology.”