GaN single-chip transceiver frontend MMIC for X-band applications

Abstract

An X-band transceiver frontend monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) has been successfully developed by using GaN HEMT technology. The MMIC contains a power amplifier (PA) with output power higher than 19 W at 10.5 GHz, a low-noise amplifier (LNA) with a gain of 18.5 dB and noise figure (NF) of 2.3 dB at 10 GHz, and an SPDT switch. The fabricated transceiver MMIC occupying only 3.6 × 3.3 mm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> delivers an output power of 6.3 W. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first GaN single-chip transceiver frontend MMIC in the X-band.