6–18-GHz High Harmonic Suppression GaN Power Amplifier MMIC for Integrated Electronic Warfare Systems

Abstract

To meet the demands of advanced integrated electronic warfare systems with satellite communication modules, a 6–18-GHz monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) power amplifier (PA) with excellent harmonic suppression at 10 GHz was designed using a 0.15- <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu \text{m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> gallium nitride (GaN) high electron mobility transistor process. An elliptic filter output matching network was developed to improve the harmonic suppression of ultrawide-bandwidth high PAs in the satellite communication frequency band. Continuous-wave mode measurement results showed that the proposed PA can realize 41.1–44.1 dBm of saturated output power and 19%–40% of power-added efficiency at 6–18 GHz while achieving −30-dBc second harmonic suppression at 10 GHz. The proposed PA can alleviate the harmonic interference between an integrated electronic warfare system and <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Ka</i> -band satellite communication module.