Commercial GaN Devices For Switching and Low Noise Applications

Gallium nitride (GaN) RF power transistor and MMIC technologies have become sufficiently mature and reliable in the last few years that there are now large numbers of fielded devices in both military and commercial applications. Wide bandgap technology is now finding extended use in switching, control and low noise applications. Cree’s GaN on silicon carbide (SiC) MMIC processes provide high drain to source breakdown voltage (typically 150 volts) resulting in robust transistor operation allowing, for example, simpler receiver protection circuitry. In addition high output impedances enable large bandwidth of operation; high output third order intercept (TOI) enables lower distortion and higher dynamic range receivers; low noise figures similar to GaAs MESFETs coupled with high fT (25 GHz) enable multi-stage LNA’s to be produced. Application areas for GaN switches, control components and low noise amplifiers include electronically scanned arrays, both military and commercial communications as well as jammers.