A Survey of GaN HEMT Technologies for Millimeter-Wave Low Noise Applications

This article presents a set of measured benchmarks for the noise and gain performance of six different millimeter-wave (mm-wave) gallium nitride (GaN) high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) technologies fabricated at four different foundries in the United States. Measurements of the GaN transistors were collected on two independent noise parameter (NP) systems from 8-50 GHz and 75-110 GHz. The resulting raw NPs were stitched together to yield ultra broadband 8-110 GHz smoothed NPs. Several comparisons and summaries of the minimum noise figure and associated gain are reported for the six different GaN technologies. This work seeks to provide an initial database for noise and gain of GaN HEMTs at mm-wave frequencies to quantify progress on technology in the future.