Satellite

Engineering

RF power amplifier

Aerospace engineering

Bandwidth (computing)

Communications satellite

Telecommunications

Amplifier

Power bandwidth

Physics

Ka band

Electronic engineering

Telecommunications link

Electrical engineering

IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters

This letter presents the design and experimental characterization of a GaN–Si monolithic Doherty power amplifier (PA) for the <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$Ka$ </tex-math></inline-formula> -band satellite downlink. The fabricated amplifier favorably compares with the current state of the art, achieving from 16.3 to 20.3 GHz (4 GHz, 22% relative bandwidth), a record band to date, 36.6–37.7-dBm output power, 23%–31% power-added efficiency, 18–22-dB gain at saturation, and around 20% power-added efficiency at 6-dB output back-off. At 18.8 GHz, the amplifier shows a noise-to-power ratio higher than 17 dB at all power levels, making it suitable for satellite applications where additional linearization is usually unfeasible.

A 5-W GaN Doherty Amplifier for <i>Ka</i>-Band Satellite Downlink With 4-GHz Bandwidth and 17-dB NPR

A 5-W GaN Doherty Amplifier for Ka-Band Satellite Downlink With 4-GHz Bandwidth and 17-dB NPR