GaN device-circuit interaction on RF linear power amplifier designed using the MVSG compact model

This work presents a GaN RF power amplifier with a common-source-common-gate (CS-CG) linearization technique, demonstrating device-circuit interactions using the physics-based MIT Virtual Source GaNFET (MVSG) model. A few device parameters are carefully chosen to investigate their effects on the circuit performance, as well as to suggest how to fabricate or choose a better GaN device for RF power amplifier design. The designed amplifier achieves 11dB gain at 6GHz, 51% drain efficiency at 35.3dBm Psat, and 39dBm output IP3 with 10V supply voltage. In this work, it is shown that the physical device parameters related to DC, RF, and thermal conditions affect the above circuit performance, especially linearity, and could be used to link the circuit performance to specific device level physics.