High Voltage Microwave Devices: An Overview

Emerging technologies like SiC and GaN offer the potential for manufacturable high performance microwave power devices operating at higher voltages than traditional GaAs-based devices. Developers of these new high-voltage-device technologies are targeting applications like cell phone base-station amplifiers, SAT-COM power amplifiers, and high power phased-array radar systems where very high power is desirable and higher supply voltages are readily available. After defining appropriate figures of merit (FOMs) that are useful for comparing different high voltage transistor technologies, we present a summary of the competing technologies and fabrication technology overviews. We compare performance and “in production ” cost with traditional GaAs-based and silicon-based technologies. Examples of recently-published results are presented, including recent work representing higher-voltage GaAs-based technologies