News Article
HRL’s GaN transistor technology available commercially
The company’s gallium nitride technology provides significant advantages for high-data-rate wireless links, radars and active sensors over other conventional products
HRL Laboratories is offering products in its GaN high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) technology range to commercial customers in select markets.
HRL has been investing in GaN transistor development since the late 1990s, reporting the first Ka-band GaN power amplifier at the 2004 IEEE International Microwave Symposium and the first W-band GaN power amplifier at the 2006 International Electron Devices Meeting.
The HRL GaN amplifiers offer more than five times improvement in E and W-band output power compared to current state-of-the-art commercial solid-state technologies. This high power output reduces the need for power combining multiple amplifiers and minimises the power module assembly complexity. What’s more, the intrinsic higher linearity of GaN allows the transmission of modulation schemes with higher spectral efficiency, increasing the potential data throughput for wireless links.
HRL is offering wideband 70 to 100 GHz GaN power amplifiers as well as a family of application-specific E and W-band power amplifiers covering the 71 to 76 GHz, 81 to 86 GHz and 90 to 96 GHz bands.
HRL will be showcasing its GaN products at the 2012 GomacTech conference (Booth # 305) taking place from March 19-22, 2012 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The company will also exhibit its GaN products at the International Microwave Symposium (Booth # 203) from June 17-22 in Montréal, Canada.
HRL Laboratories, LLC, Malibu, California is a corporate research-and-development laboratory owned by The Boeing Company and General Motors. It specialises in research into sensors and materials, information and systems sciences, applied electromagnetics, and microelectronics. HRL provides custom research and development and performs additional R&D contract services for its LLC member companies, the U.S. government, and other commercial companies.
