Electrical modeling of packaged GaN HEMT dedicated to internal power matching in S-band

International audience; The electrical modeling of power packages is a major issue for designers of high-efficiency hybrid power amplifiers. This paper reports the synthesis and the modeling of a packaged Gallium nitride (GaN) High electron mobility transistor (HEMT) associating a nonlinear model of the GaN HEMT die with an equivalent circuit model of the package. The extraction procedure is based on multi-bias S-parameter measurements of both packaged and unpackaged (on-wafer) configurations. Two different designs of 20 W packaged GaN HEMTs illustrate the modeling approach that is validated by time-domain load-pull measurements in S-band. The advantage of the electrical modeling dedicated to packaged GaN HEMTs is to enable a die-package co-design for power matching. Internal matching elements such as Metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) capacitors, Monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs), and bond wires can be separately modeled to ensure an efficient optimization of the package for high power Radio frequency (RF) applications.