A novel approach for wide band high-efficiency power amplifier design

Wireless communication systems require an efficient and broadband RF frontend. RF Power Amplifiers (PA) are the most critical component in the RF frontend and are considered the bottleneck in high efficient wideband transmitters. The research starts with an investigation of high efficient operation modes based on waveform engineering. The outcome of the research can be divided into two main parts: The first concerns an analysis of high efficient modes of operation. The second part builds on first part looking at the PA’s efficiency-bandwidth perspective to design a wide band high efficient PA. The first part of the thesis, introduces a novel linear high efficient PA mode termed Injection Power Amplifier (IPA) that exceeds drain efficiency of 90% without relying on the nonlinearity of a PA at the compression region. This is achieved by presenting appropriate negative harmonic impedances to a transistor to reduce the dissipated power, thus, increasing the efficiency of conversion of DC to fundamental RF power. The theoretical analysis of this mode is presented and a validation measurement has been carried out using an active load-pull system. The measured results confirmed the theoretical predictions of achieving high efficiency in a linear PA operation. Furthermore, a PA structure that is based on two parallel PAs (main PA and auxiliary PA) has been proposed along with the practical circuit realization of the IPA mode. In addition, a PA prototype has been designed following a methodology of nonlinear PA design based on waveform engineering. The PA prototype has been characterized and built operating at 0.9 GHz with an output power of 10 W showing a high linear efficient operation of 80% drain efficiency at only 1 dB compression level. The second part of this work aims to tackle today’s limitation of high efficient wideband PAs beyond octave bandwidth. A conceptual system based on multimode operation has been proposed to overcome the need for bandlimiting passive harmonic termination. This novel approach is based on combining passive termination with active harmonic injection to get around the theoretical limitation of one octave for high efficiency harmonically tuned power amplifiers. Furthermore, a proof of concept PA prototype has been designed and built for a two octave bandwidth (4:1 bandwidth) operating from 0.63-2.56 GHz and providing the rated output power of a 10 W GaN device with a PAE greater than 50% at only 1 dB compression point. This multi-mode approach shows a promising technique for future wideband high efficiency wireless transmitters