High-gain and high-linearity MMIC GaN Doherty Power Amplifier with 3-GHz bandwidth for Ka-band satellite communications

This paper presents the design of a Doherty power amplifier for satellite applications in the Ka-band downlink (17.3-20.3 GHz) implemented on a 100 nm GaN-Si HEMT technology. The design aims to achieve high gain and very high intrinsic linearity over a wide bandwidth of 3 GHz, while providing 36 dBm of output power at chip level. The experimental characterization on the fabricated chip mounted in a test jig demonstrates that the DPA is able to maintain NPR higher than 25 dB and power-added efficiency of 30 % while providing 36 dBm of output power, achieving state-of-the-art performance among the integrated power amplifiers for satellite communications.