Benoit Mallet-Guy

A 39.7 dBm and 18.5% PAE compact X to Ku band GaN Travelling Wave Amplifier

This article presents an 8GHz to 18GHz Travelling Wave Amplifier (TWA) averaging 39.7dBm of output power and 18.5% Power Added Efficiency (PAE). At 11 GHz, the TWA reaches a peak output power 40.4dBm and a peak PAE of 22%. The proposed architecture consists in the combination of two TWAs in parallel to increase output power. An innovative low loss compact power combiner is proposed to reduce the overall die size and keep high PAE. The amplifier presented here has the advantage to be very compact compared to similar MMICs High Power Amplifiers (HPA). An innovative design methodology based on a strong correlation between the amplifier and the combiner design is introduced.

A compact fully integrated GaN high power amplifier for C-X band applications

A fully integrated two-stage power amplifier is described for 4-6 W saturated output power over a 4GHz to 11GHz frequency range. The PA topology is chosen to obtain the best bandwidth, output power and Power Added Efficiency (PAE). The output stage is composed of two unit power cells and the power recombination is made by a stacked balun. The differential input of the power stage is provided by the first stage which realized a single to differentiel conversion. The PA is designed and fabricated in a 0.25μm GaN integrated technology from UMS foundry. Both simulations and measurement results are presented. This GaN PA provides 38 dBm of maximum saturated power and 18% to 31% peak PAE in the 4GHz to 11GHz frequency range.

A 2.4GHz to 6GHz active balun in GaN technology

This article presents a S-C band active balun in a GaN integrated technology. Based on a differential pair this circuit realizes the single to differential conversion. Moreover this circuit can be used as preamplifier to drive a power stage. It delivers more than 25dBm in each differential path in the [2,4GHz-6GHz] band with a maximum of 29dBm at 3.8GHz. The chip has been realized in the UMS GH25 process, a GaN HEMT technology with a 0.25μm gate length.