I. Khalil, A. Liero, M. Rudolph, R. Lossy, and W. Heinrich

Published in:

IEEE Microwave Wireless Compon. Lett., vol. 18, no. 9, pp. 605-607 (2008).

Abstract:

This paper presents a study of the capability of gallium- nitride (GaN) high-electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) to achieve low noise and high linearity performance. A packaged GaN HEMT was measured in a 50-Ω system at 2 GHz. Noise figures slightly above 1.8 dB were achieved together with a record third order intercept point of 54 dBm. The same configuration yields a maximum output power of 30 W, with 50% power-added efficiency. This combination of high power and low-noise performance allows the realization of highly linear low-noise amplifiers, which could significantly reduce protection and filter efforts at receiver inputs.

Index Terms:

Amplifier distortion, amplifier noise, cross modulation distortion, distortion, intermodulation distortion (IMD), microwave power field-effect transistor (FET) amplifiers, semiconductor device noise.

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