Hittite Microwave has introduced a GaN HEMT MMIC wideband power amplifier suitable for test and measurement equipment and military EW and ECM applications up to 10GHz. The HMC999 is a C distributed power amplifier chip which operates between 0.01 and 10GHz. It provides 11dB of gain, +38dBm of output power at 1dB gain compression and +47dBm output IP3 at midband. The amplifier can be operated from a drain voltage of +28V while producing 5W of saturated output power. At maximum output power, it consumes 1100mA of quiescent current from a +48V supply, and achieves approximately 18% power added efficiency at saturation. It delivers 10W of saturated output power in a chip area of 7mm2, equating to a power density of 1.5W/mm2 across three decades of bandwidth. The amplifier is matched to 50Ω on-chip, and requires external bias decoupling capacitors and an external bias tee for drain bias injection.
