A Wideband and Highly Efficient Circulator Load Modulated Power Amplifier Architecture
Artikel i vetenskaplig tidskrift, 2023

A complete theoretical analysis is presented for a highly efficient power amplifier (PA) architecture based on a non-reciprocal combiner. The architecture consists of two amplifier branches and a microwave circulator acting as the output combiner, referred to as the circulator load-modulated amplifier (CLMA). The continuous-mode (CM) design technique has been further exploited for the CLMA to demonstrate the wideband capabilities of the architecture. The analysis reveals that the CLMA performs active load modulation to maintain high PA efficiency performance across a wide bandwidth and large output power dynamic range. As a proof of concept, a CLMA demonstrator circuit based on gallium nitride (GaN) transistors and a microwave circulator, is designed and characterized with continuous-wave and modulated-signal measurements. The implemented CLMA prototype circuit experimentally demonstrates Doherty-like efficiency enhancement over a large bandwidth covering 2.1 to 3.5 GHz. In measurements, the prototype exhibits a drain efficiency of 46.7-57.5% at peak output power and 35.6-50.6% at 7-dB output power back-off level, within the design bandwidth. When tested with a 60-MHz multi-carrier orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) signal having a 7-dB peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR), an average efficiency of 48.5% with better than − 47.5-dBc adjacent channel leakage ratio (ACLR) is achieved after applying digital pre-distortion (DPD).

efficiency enhancement technique

GaN

Energy efficiency

non-reciprocal

wideband

power amplifier

load modulation

circulator

Författare

Han Zhou

Chalmers, Mikroteknologi och nanovetenskap, Mikrovågselektronik

Jose-Ramon Perez-Cisneros

Chalmers, Mikroteknologi och nanovetenskap, Mikrovågselektronik

Björn Langborn

Chalmers, Elektroteknik, Kommunikation, Antenner och Optiska Nätverk

Thomas Eriksson

Chalmers, Elektroteknik, Kommunikation, Antenner och Optiska Nätverk

Christian Fager

Chalmers, Mikroteknologi och nanovetenskap, Mikrovågselektronik

IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers

1549-8328 (ISSN) 15580806 (eISSN)

Vol. 70 8 3117 -3129

Styrkeområden

Informations- och kommunikationsteknik

Nanovetenskap och nanoteknik

Infrastruktur

Kollberglaboratoriet

Ämneskategorier

Telekommunikation

Annan elektroteknik och elektronik

DOI

10.1109/TCSI.2023.3277098

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Senast uppdaterat

2024-05-01