A balanced 2 watt compact PHEMT power amplifier MMIC for Ka-band applications

Abstract

A balanced form, compact power amplifier MMIC operating at Ka-band was designed and developed using TriQuint's 3MI 0.25/spl mu/m gate length pHEMT technology. This balanced three-stage power amplifier, with chip size of 6.16mm/sup 2/ (2.8/spl times/2.2mm), on 100/spl mu/m GaAs substrate achieved 32.8dBm (1.9Watt) P/sub 1dB/ output power and saturated output power above 2 Watts with higher small signal gain than 18dB at 30GHz. This chip provides a high power and low cost benchmark solution for Ka-band radio market.