Custom MMIC To Present On GaN LNAs At EuMW

Custom MMIC has announced it will be attending European Microwave Week 2017 in Nuremberg, Germany, October 8th through 13th to present the latest developments in GaAs and GaN RF/microwave MMICs.

Nicholas Novaris, a lead engineer with Custom MMIC, will be presenting a paper ‘Understanding the Phenomenon of High Power Pulse Recovery in GaN LNAs’ that explores and details the high power pulse recovery behaviour of commercially available GaN low noise amplifiers (LNAs) under overdrive conditions.

This topic has become pertinent as GaN LNAs, with comparable noise figures to common GaAs LNAs, are capable of withstanding high input power levels without the need for additional and performance degrading limiter circuitry, unlike GaAs LNAs.

Such robustness is attractive for defence applications, as military and aerospace receiver systems are often subject to jamming signals, and may be in close proximity to high power transmitters.

Custom MMIC has discovered, however, that even though GaN LNAs can withstand the high power interfering inputs, when the interference signal is removed rapidly, residual distortion occurs until the device recovers.

Advancing on past research, Custom MMIC engineers subjected GaN LNAs to non-coherent jamming signals with varying duration and intensity. It was discovered the recovery time exhibited radical relationship related to the input power. Moreover, the input action also significantly impacted the pulse recovery time.

Nicolas Novaris will be sharing the results of this study Wednesday, October 11th, at 2:10 PM in the Kiew room, as part of the EuMC28 sessions on amplifiers and receivers.