Millimeter-Wave GaN High Power Amplifier MMIC Design Guideline considering a Source via Effect

A millimeter-wave (mmWave) gallium nitride (GaN) high-power amplifier (PA) monolithic microwave-integrated circuit (MMIC) was implemented, considering a source via effect. In this paper, we introduce guidelines for designing GaN high PA MMICs, from device sizing to meeting high-power specifications, power matching considering source via effects, schematic design of three-stage amplifier structures, and electromagnetic (EM) simulation. Based on the results of load pull simulation and small-signal maximum stable gain (MSG) simulation, the GaN high electron-mobility transistor (HEMT) size was selected to be 8×70 μm. However, since the source via model provided by the foundry was significantly different from the EM results, it was necessary to readjust the power matching considering this. Additionally, when selecting the source via size, the larger the size, the easier the matching, but since the layout of the peripheral bias circuit is not possible, a compromise was required considering the actual layout. To prevent in-band oscillation, an RC parallel circuit was added to the input matching circuit, and low-frequency oscillation was solved by adding a gate resistor on the PCB module. The proposed PA was fabricated with a commercial 0.1 μm GaN HEMT MMIC process. It exhibited 38.56 to 39.71 dBm output power (Pout), 14.2 to 16.7 dB linear gain, and 14.1% to 18.2% power-added efficiency (PAE) between 34 and 36 GHz. The fabricated GaN power amplifier MMIC shows competitive Pout in the Ka upper band above 33 GHz