On Design of Wideband Compact-Size Ka/Q-Band High-Power Amplifiers.

This paper presents a methodology for the design of Ka/Q-band monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) high-power amplifiers (HPAs). Design techniques are introduced to reduce chip area and to improve bandwidth (BW). These techniques are applied to the design of a 31–39-GHz 5-W HPA implemented on a \text 0.1-\mu \text m AlGaAs-InGaAs pseudomorphic HEMT (pHEMT) technology. With chip dimensions of ${{3.35}}\times {{3.2}}~{\text {mm}}^{2} , the HPA achieves 24% average power-added efficiency (PAE) over the frequency band, while maintaining an average 22-dB small-signal gain. A balanced high-power amplifier (BPA) is also presented, which combines the power of two 5-W HPA cells to deliver peak 8.5-W output power ( P\mathrm {out}) in the frequency band of 30–38 GHz. The BPA chip area is {{3.5}}\times {{6.5}}~{\text {mm}}^{2} , and 21-dB average small-signal gain is obtained over the frequency band. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]