A Review of GaN MMIC Power Amplifier Technologies for Millimeter-Wave Applications

GaN microwave monolithic integrated circuit (MMIC) power amplifiers (PAs) technologies for millimeter-wave (mm-wave) ap-plications are reviewed in this paper. In the mm-wave band, GaN PAs have achieved high-output power as much as traveling wave tube amplifiers used in satellite communications. Additionally, GaN PAs have been integrated enough to be used for 5G and Beyond-5G. In this paper, a high accuracy large-signal GaN-HEMT modeling technique including the trapping effects is introduced in mm-waves. The prototyped PAs designed with the novel modeling technique have achieved RF performance comparable to that of the state-of-the-art GaN PAs in mm-wave.