Design of continuous-mode GaN power amplifier with compact fundamental impedance solutions on package plane
- Author(s): Jingzhou Pang 1 ; Songbai He 1 ; Zhijiang Dai 1 ; Chaoyi Huang 1 ; Jun Peng 1 ; Fei You 1
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Volume 10, Issue 10,
18 July 2016,
p.
1056 – 1064
DOI: 10.1049/iet-map.2015.0804 , Print ISSN 1751-8725, Online ISSN 1751-8733
A novel methodology for designing broadband Class-J power amplifiers (PAs) with compact fundamental impedances on the package plane is presented. A simple transistor model with knee voltage region is built to predict efficiency performance and clipping waveforms caused by the clipping effects. To realise the proposed impedance solutions, a broadband matching network is presented based on the shot-stepped Chebyshev impedance transformer. A broadband Gallium Nitride (GaN) PA is designed using this method and achieve a very wide operation band from 0.8 to 3.6 GHz. More than 10 dB gain, 55.8–74.1% drain efficiency and around −30 dBc adjacent channel power ratio are measured without linearisation throughout the entire band. At 33 dBm average output power level, an average power-added efficiency of 27% and adjacent power leakage ratio of −46.3 dBc is obtained with 9 dB peak-to-average power ratio 20 MHz long-term evolution test signals at 2.4 GHz.
Inspec keywords: gallium compounds; III-V semiconductors; UHF power amplifiers; microwave power amplifiers; impedance convertors; wide band gap semiconductors
Other keywords: adjacent power leakage ratio; Long-Term Evolution test signals; package plane; broadband class-J power amplifier design; gain 10 dB; efficiency 27 percent; continuous-mode gallium nitride power amplifier; efficiency 55.8 percent to 74.1 percent; peak-to-average power ratio; shot-stepped Chebyshev impedance transformer; broadband matching network; drain efficiency; GaN; clipping waveforms; compact fundamental impedance solution; voltage region; broadband class-J PA design; adjacent channel power ratio; average power-added efficiency
Subjects: Amplifiers; Active filters and other active networks
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