ALPHACORE INC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: AF182-111
ALPHACORE INC — SBIR Phase I award from Department of Defense.
- Amount
- $149,960
- Agency
- Department of Defense · Air Force
- Program / Phase
- SBIR · Phase I
- Topic
- AF182-111
- Solicitation
- 18.2
- NAICS
- —
- Place of performance
- AZ
- Period
- 2019-02-25 → 2020-02-25
Description
Alphacore, Inc. proposes to design, simulate, and verify a radiation-hard fully-integrated gallium nitride (GaN) based V-band power amplifier (PA). As detailed in Air Force’s Phase I solicitation subtopic AF182-111 the designed power amplifier will exhibit greater than 30 W of saturated output power (Psat) at power added efficiency (PAE) level of >30%. The amplifier will maintain this output power within the frequency range of 71 GHz to 76 GHz. The power amplifier will have 24 x 1.5W PA monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMIC) combined with a novel power combiner. The power amplifier MMIC will include techniques to improve efficiency and decrease footprint while maintaining the desired output power. The proposed amplifier will be designed using HRL’s T3 gallium nitride on silicon carbide (GaN-on-SiC) fabrication process and have an extended frequency range from 69 GHz to 78 GHz, radiation hardness level >1Mrad and operating temperature range from -55˚C to +85˚C. To achieve an output power of greater than 1.5 W, the PA MMIC will be designed as a balanced power amplifier with power splitting and combining integrated into the MMIC.