A GaN high power and efficient amplifier for L-Band Galileo system

This paper describes the development of an L-Band (f₀ = 1.575GHz) high power and efficient amplifier designed for the European satellite navigation system (i.e., Galileo). The amplifier, developed in the framework of the European Project named SLOGAN, exploits the GH50-10 GaN technology available at United Monolithic Semiconductor foundry. The required output power level is achieved by parallelizing several GaN die power bars of 12mm and/or 26.5 mm. In continuous wave operating mode, the first prototype is able to deliver an output power higher than 250W at less than 2 dB of gain compression. Moreover, the registered gain and efficiency are higher than 54 dB and 54 %, respectively.