Jul 18 2007
Sirenza Microdevices today announced that the company has produced what it believes to be the first Gallium Nitride (GaN) power amplifier with an output power above 2 Watts and a noise figure (NF) below 1 db, encompassing the 0.2 to 8 GHz range.
Kevin Kobayashi, executive engineering fellow, presented the details of the AlGaN/GaN-SiC HEMT at the International Microwave Symposium in Hawaii on June 5. Sirenza’s GaN-based high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) amplifier was built at Northrop Grumman Corporation’s (NYSE:NOC) Space Technology sector in Redondo Beach, Calif.
“What is exceptional about this amplifier is the fact that it exploits both the low noise and high power capability of the GaN HEMT device technology,” stated Kobayashi. “Some of the potential applications for such an amplifier include cellular base station transceivers, WiMAX and CATV.” Kobayashi added, “We describe fully monolithic solutions which offer the potential for development of future commercial devices with industry-leading performance, reproducibility and scalability for MMIC applications. Until now MMIC matched low-noise amplifiers have been limited to linear output of 1 Watt or less and noise figures above 1 db over a multi-octave bandwidth in the S- and C-band frequency range.”
At 12 V and 200 mA the MMIC PA recorded a NF of approximately 0.5 dB. At 15 V and 400 mA the NF was in the range of 0.7 to 0.9 dB. Maximum power density of the device was reported as 2.2 W/mm.