Experimental time-domain evaluation and simulation of high power GaN HEMTS for RF Doherty Amplifier design

Lotfi Ayari (1) , Guillaume Neveux (1) , Denis Barataud (1) , Mohammed Ayad (1) , Estelle Byk (2) , Christophe Chang (2) , Marc Camiade (2)

1 XLIM-C2S2 - C2S2
2 UMS - United Monolithic Semiconductors SAS

This paper presents an automatized, on-wafer time-domain active load-pull set-up developed for a Doherty-oriented characterization of High Power GaN High-Electron Mobility Transistors (HEMTs). From the on-wafer measured Time-Domain Waveforms (TDW) acquisition, all data required for the design of a Doherty Power Amplifier (DPA) are then directly extracted. With this measurement process, designers have then the direct knowledge of the optimal characteristics of high power transistors along the Output Back-Off (OBO). They also can deduce the maximum obtainable operating bandwidth of the final Doherty PA. Simultaneously to this measurement process, simulations based on the use of non-linear foundry electro-thermal model have also been performed to prove the validity of the method to predict Power Added Efficiency (PAE) performances versus OBO. Measurement and simulations have been applied to an 8×125μm AlGaN/GaN GH25 transistor from UMS foundry.

Mots clés: III-V semiconductors gallium compounds high electron mobility transistors radiofrequency power amplifiers wide band gap semiconductors

Domaines: Sciences de l'ingénieur [physics]; Electronique; Sciences de l'ingénieur [physics]; Micro et nanotechnologies/Microélectronique

Lotfi Ayari, Guillaume Neveux, Denis Barataud, Mohammed Ayad, Estelle Byk, et al.. Experimental time-domain evaluation and simulation of high power GaN HEMTS for RF Doherty Amplifier design. Microwave Integrated Circuits Conference (EuMIC), 2015 10th European, IEEE, Sep 2015, PARIS, France. pp.361-364, ⟨10.1109/EuMIC.2015.7345144⟩. ⟨hal-01286576⟩