Compact Stacked Rugged GaN Low-Noise Amplifier MMIC under Input Power Overdrive Condition

Rugged GaN HEMT LNAs are well established in the receive path of T/R front ends. In order to further enhance the ruggedness against high input powers, stacked transistors can be used in the first stage of the LNA. This work aims to prove that the stack achieves 2W higher ruggedness relative to a standard LNA while preserving competitive small-signal properties, especially low noise figure. Therefore, we present the measured small-signal parameters and the stress measurements under high input powers of a stacked GaN LNA MMIC, combining a low noise figure around 2.6 dB in C-band with a ruggedness, that is verified up to an input power of 40 dBm.