A 6-W KA-BAND POWER MODULE USING MMIC POWER-AMPLIFIERS

This paper presents the development of a 6-W 24% power-added efficienc y (PAE) K a-band power module with an associated power gain of 21.5 dB , The power module consists of a driver amplifier and tno power amplif ier chips, These monolithic millimeter-wave integrated (MMIC) amplifie rs were fabricated with a 2-mil-thick substrate using 0.15-mu m InGaAs /AlGaAs/GaAs high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) technology, The driver amplifier is a fully matched single-ended design with an output power of 27.5 dBm, a 10.7-dB power gain and 27% PAE. We use a hybrid approach for the output power amplifier, which consists of two partial ly matched MMIC chips and an eight-way Wilkinson combiner fabricated o n Alumina substrate. The MMIC power amplifiers delivered a record powe r of 35.4 dBm (3.5 W) with a PAE of 28% and an associated power gain o f 11.5 dB, The eight-way combiner has an insertion loss of 0.6 dB.