Title :
Design of high efficiency Ka-band harmonically tuned power amplifiers
Author :
Nemati, Hossein Mashad ; Ferndahl, Mattias ; Angelov, Iltcho ; Fager, Christian ; Zirath, Herbert
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Microtechnol. & Nanosci., Chalmers Univ. of Technol., Gothenburg
Abstract :
A harmonically tuned power amplifier (PA) design approach is presented to provide high efficiency performance at Ka-band using a GaAs mHEMT device technology. A single-stage monolithic-microwave integrated-circuit (MMIC) class-AB PA is designed and measured. The PA efficiency is optimized for a circuit topology which allows harmonic load impedance terminations up to the third harmonic. An output power of 14 dBm is measured with a small-signal gain of 14 dB and a maximum power-added-efficiency (PAE) of 43%. Good agreement between measurement and simulation results is observed which allows further investigations through harmonic load-pull simulations using the in-house large-signal model of the device. It is shown that the PAE can be further increased to 50% by more careful second and third harmonic load impedance terminations.
Keywords :
III-V semiconductors; MMIC power amplifiers; gallium arsenide; high electron mobility transistors; power amplifiers; GaAs; circuit topology; harmonic load impedance; harmonic load-pull simulations; monolithic-microwave integrated-circuit; power amplifiers; power-added-efficiency; second harmonic load impedance; third harmonic load impedance; Circuit topology; Gallium arsenide; High power amplifiers; Impedance; Integrated circuit measurements; Integrated circuit technology; MMICs; Power generation; Power measurement; mHEMTs; Ka-band; mHEMT; power amplifier;
Conference_Titel :
Radio and Wireless Symposium, 2009. RWS '09. IEEE
Conference_Location :
San Diego, CA
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4244-2698-0
Electronic_ISBN :
978-1-4244-2699-7
DOI :
10.1109/RWS.2009.4957384
