Design of a Compact GaN Power Amplifier with High Efficiency and Beyond Decade Bandwidth
Journal article, 2022

This letter presents a power amplifier (PA) design and network synthesis approach to achieve wideband and efficient performance with a very compact circuit size. A design method is presented in detail to convert a canonical filter-based high-order matching network to the proposed matching configuration with transistor parasitic and packaged elements absorption, and a compact passive network footprint. As a proof of concept, a prototype GaN HEMT PA is implemented. Starting from a fourth-order output network filter, the inductances and capacitance of the filter elements are re-organized to model, and thus absorb the output parasitics of the transistor, leading to a compact footprint with only four transmission lines. The measured results show that the prototype PA achieves an output power of 41.9-44.3 dBm and a 55-74 % drain efficiency, over a record-high decade bandwidth (0.35-3.55 GHz).

wideband matching networks

HEMT

power amplifier (PA)

decade bandwidt

Energy efficiency

GaN

Author

Han Zhou

Chalmers, Microtechnology and Nanoscience (MC2), Microwave Electronics

Jose-Ramon Perez-Cisneros

Chalmers, Microtechnology and Nanoscience (MC2), Microwave Electronics

Björn Langborn

Chalmers, Electrical Engineering, Communication, Antennas and Optical Networks

Thomas Eriksson

Chalmers, Electrical Engineering, Communication, Antennas and Optical Networks

Christian Fager

Chalmers, Microtechnology and Nanoscience (MC2), Microwave Electronics

IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters

1531-1309 (ISSN) 15581764 (eISSN)

Vol. 32 12 1439-1442

Areas of Advance

Information and Communication Technology

Subject Categories

Telecommunications

Communication Systems

Other Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering

DOI

10.1109/LMWC.2022.3186805

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5/1/2024 9