To meet the demands of the N211-086 N-Polar Gallium Nitride High Electron Mobility Transistor in Low-Cost Process Technology for mm-wave Transceiver Applications program, the MaXentric team proposes the ANTHEM (Amplifier using N-polar T-gate gallium nitride High Electron Mobility transistor), which provides E-band low noise amplifier (LNA) and transmit/receive (T/R) switch using a Nitrogen-polar (N-polar) Gallium Nitride (GaN) high-electron mobility transistor (HEMT) technology. The device will be fabricated on a low-cost Sapphire substrate that can be scaled to diameters of 150 mm and above. During Phase I, the team characterized and modeled a N-polar GaN HEMT device, especially for the noise performance in a millimeter-wave frequency band. In addition, E-band LNA and T/R switch were designed using extracted models, where the targeted gain and noise figure are >15 dB and
Benefit: Many military wireless network systems operate in millimeter-wave bands to address the demand on higher data rate. Latest millimeter-wave transceiver systems tend to employ active electronically scanned array (AESA) architecture, where each antenna element is connected to a small solid-state transmit/receive (T/R) module under the control of a computer. The proposed solution satisfies the requirement with high sensitivity, low power consumption and low cost. Developed technology will be suitable as a T/R component (including LNA, T/R switch and high power amplifier) for AESA application, such as 5G, SATCOM and point-to-point communication. The low noise performance of the front-end amplifier is a key technology for wireless link to extend communication distance and to use a smaller size array. MaXentric will implement the developed MMICs into our products being developed under DoD SBIR programs, in addition with providing them to our customers
Keywords: Low noise amplifier, wireless communication, Nitrogen-polar Gallium Nitride, high-electron mobility transistor, noise figure, transmit/receive switch, Sapphire, millimeter wave frequency
