A 24-28.5GHz Compact GaN/SiC MMIC Power Amplifier with 39% Peak PAE Supporting 5G 400MHz Down-Link Signal

This paper presents the design and experimental characterization of a compact two-stage monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) power amplifier (PA) implemented in a 150nm GaN/SiC high electron mobility (HEMT) technology. The proposed PA achieves 31.2-31.9dBm of saturated output power (P-sat), 36.7-39.2% peak PAE and a small-signal gain of 18.6-20.5dB across the n258 (24.25-27.5GHz) band, under CW excitation. The PA exhibits high linearity under 100/400MHz 5G QPSK downlink signals and achieves -24.5/-25.1dBc ACLR, 24.8/24.5dB EVM, for an average P-out of 24.2/20dBm and PAE of 22.1/11%, at 26GHz without digital pre-distortion (DPD). Its compact size (2mm(2)) and high performance advance the state-of-the-art (SOTA) for GaN MMIC PAs operating in the 5G n258 (24.25-27.5GHz) frequency band.