An Efficient and Linear 24.4dBm Ka-Band GaAs Power Amplifier for 5G Communication

A linear and highly efficient Ka-band power amplifier (PA) for the fifth generation mobile network (5G) application is realized on a 0.15-μm Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) D-mode pseudomorphic high electron mobility transistor (p-HEMT) process. A peak power added efficiency (PAE max ) of 43.4%, with peak gain of 21.2dB and saturated output power (P sat ) of 24.4dBm is recorded at 27 GHz in measurement. The PA provides a higher than 36.7% PAE max with above 20dB gain and 23.8dBm P sat across the frequency range of 25 to 31GHz. The two-stage PA also achieves an up to 21.5% average PAE (PAE avg ) for a -30.5dB rms error vector magnitude (EVM) at 64-Quadrature amplitude modulation (64-QAM) with 100MHz of channel bandwidth (BW).