IEEE Journal of Microwaves (Jan 2023)

A Survey of GaN HEMT Technologies for Millimeter-Wave Low Noise Applications

  • Nicholas C. Miller,
  • Andrea Arias-Purdue,
  • Erdem Arkun,
  • David Brown,
  • James F. Buckwalter,
  • Robert L. Coffie,
  • Andrea Corrion,
  • Daniel J. Denninghoff,
  • Michael Elliott,
  • Dave Fanning,
  • Ryan Gilbert,
  • Daniel S. Green,
  • Florian Herrault,
  • Ben Heying,
  • Casey M. King,
  • Eythan Lam,
  • Jeong-Sun Moon,
  • Petra V. Rowell,
  • Georges Siddiqi,
  • Ioulia Smorchkova,
  • Joe Tai,
  • Jansen Uyeda,
  • Mike Wojtowicz

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1109/JMW.2023.3313111
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 3, no. 4
pp. 1134 – 1146

Abstract

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This article presents a set of measured benchmarks for the noise and gain performance of six different millimeter-wave (mm-wave) gallium nitride (GaN) high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) technologies fabricated at four different foundries in the United States. Measurements of the GaN transistors were collected on two independent noise parameter (NP) systems from 8–50 GHz and 75–110 GHz. The resulting raw NPs were stitched together to yield ultra broadband 8–110 GHz smoothed NPs. Several comparisons and summaries of the minimum noise figure and associated gain are reported for the six different GaN technologies. This work seeks to provide an initial database for noise and gain of GaN HEMTs at mm-wave frequencies to quantify progress on technology in the future.

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