Contact Inquiries: Michele Durant, 310-317-5321
LOS ANGELES, March 15, 2007—HRL Laboratories, LLC has demonstrated world record power amplifiers in a high frequency materials technology that could enable integrated circuits and solid state modules up to ten times more powerful than those of existing materials systems. The targeted frequency range is the W-band (75 GHz to 110 GHz), and the material is gallium nitride (GaN). Applications include communications, radar, and sensor systems, with potential increases of 300% in operating range for a communication system, and a 70% increase in range for a radar system.
HRL set the world record with Millimeter-wave Monolithic Integrated Circuit (MMIC) power amplifiers in the W-band. These amplifiers have five times the power density of the existing state of the art of corresponding indium phosphide and gallium arsenide technologies. Besides those mentioned above, a specific exciting application for the HRL technology is cost-effective wireless transmission of data at 10 gigabits per second, which is the equivalent of 10,000 DSL lines. Recently, three E-band spectrum segments (71-to-76 GHz, 81-to-86 GHz and 92-to-95 GHz) have been allocated in the U.S. for gigabit-rate wireless links.
Advantages of millimeter wave systems in general include smaller and lighter antennas than their lower-frequency counterparts, and higher resolution for imaging systems. But until the HRL breakthrough, most millimeter wave systems at the higher frequency range used gallium arsenide and indium phosphide components. These materials, however, have limitations (temperature constraints, short channel effects) that restrict performance. The HRL devices, and specifically the first W-band integrated circuit (MMIC) in gallium nitride, provide higher output power to produce the operating increases described above.
High power and low noise are key attributes of the heterostructure field effect transistor (HFET) structure that has enabled the HRL GaN breakthrough. Put together, the materials system and structure can enable, for example, such other promising W-band applications as all-weather radar, surveillance, and reconnaissance, as well as the high-speed wireless data links that are allocated across the W-band.
HRL Laboratories, LLC, Malibu, California, is a corporate R&D laboratory owned by Boeing and General Motors. HRL provides custom R&D and performs additional R&D contract services for its LLC Members, for the U.S. government, and for other commercial entities.
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