A V-band eight-way combined solid-state power amplifier with 12.8 Watt output power

Abstract

This paper describes the design and development of a V-band 12.8 Watt solid-state power amplifier (SSPA) unit that has been successfully demonstrated over a wide frequency band from 59 to 63 GHz. To achieve such power, high output power MMICs were designed with close to 1 Watt output power using the space qualified GaAs HEMT process at Northrop Grumman Space Technology. The power amplifier unit also implemented a unique waveguide combining method to efficiently combine half-height SSPA waveguide modules into full-height waveguide SSPA modules. The 8-way splitter/combiner is a Militech state-of-the-art hybrid ring "rat-race" waveguide design with extremely low loss at V-band frequencies. To the author's knowledge, these are the best reported results in V-band combiners to date.