A 0.9-5- GHz Wide-Range 1W-Class Reconfigurable Power Amplifier Employing RF-MEMS Switches

A novel reconfigurable multi-band highly efficient power amplifier (PA) is presented that operates in several widely separated frequency bands such as 0.9 to 5 GHz. The newly proposed design scheme for band-switchable matching networks (MNs) makes the network compact, even if they cover various frequency bands. RF-MEMS switches aid in the implementation of the MNs in that they are nearly ideal because the switches have excellent insertion loss and isolation characteristics. According to the proposed scheme, a hexa-band PA was designed and a quad-band PA was fabricated that includes the highest and the lowest frequency bands. The fabricated 1W-class PA achieved high output power and high power added efficiency as expected in the 0.9, 1.5, 2, and 5-GHz bands. The results show that the reconfigurable PA can be extended to "band-free" operation for future mobile terminals