Low power-amplifier design based on passive load-pull

Paper in proceeding, 2014

© 2014 IEEE. The general unavailability of highly accurate nonlinear simulation models for power amplifier (PA) necessitate the use of expensive active load-pull setups for achieving optimum conditions for efficiency and power. In this paper, a low cost alternative and a first time right design method is presented for PA design based on passive load-pull. A 10 W c1ass-AB PA was designed and fabricated at 2.25 GHz frequency. High attention was paid to make the amplifier much linear in order to meet the challenges of modern-day wireless communications and to support complex modulation formats. The levels of different inter-modulation distortion (IMD) products were measured and also the third order intercept point (IP3) was calculated as Fig. of merit.