Design of Adaptive Highly Efficient GaN Power Amplifier for Octave-Bandwidth Application and Dynamic Load Modulation
Abstract
This paper presents a novel adaptive power amplifier (PA) architecture for performing dynamic-load-modulation. For the first time, a dynamically-load-modulated PA design that achieves octave bandwidth, high power and high efficiency simultaneously is experimentally demonstrated. This PA design is based on a commercial GaN HEMT. The output matching scheme incorporates a broadband static matching for high-efficiency at the maximum power level and a wideband dynamic matching for efficiency enhancement at power back-offs. The impedance and frequency tunability is realized using silicon diode varactors with a very high breakdown voltage of 90 V. Experimental results show that a dynamic-load-modulation from maximum power to 10-dB back-off is achieved from 1 to 1.9 GHz, with a measured performance of approximate to 10-W peak power, approximate to 10-dB gain, 64%-79% peak-power efficiency, and 30%-45% efficiency at 10-dB power back-off throughout this band.
Keywords
Adaptive; broadband matching; diode varactor; dynamic load modulation; GaN; high efficiency; high power; power amplifier (PA); tunable matching network; DOHERTY AMPLIFIER; DISTORTION
DOI
10.1109/TMTT.2012.2189232
Citation
Design of Adaptive Highly Efficient GaN Power Amplifier for Octave-Bandwidth Application and Dynamic Load Modulation Kenle Chen; Dimitrios Peroulis IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques Year: 2012, Volume: 60, Issue: 6 Pages: 1829 - 1839
Date of this Version
6-2012
Recommended Citation
Chen, Kenle and Peroulis, Dimitrios, "Design of Adaptive Highly Efficient GaN Power Amplifier for Octave-Bandwidth Application and Dynamic Load Modulation" (2012). Birck and NCN Publications. Paper 1184.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TMTT.2012.2189232