GaN MMIC broadband saturated power amplifier

We design a broadband power amplifier (PA) for a base-station in a wireless communication system. This PA covers ultra-wide band including most of the mobile operation frequencies. To achieve the broadband operation, we adopt a saturated PA topology. The saturated PA has simple input and output matching networks because only the fundamental impedance needs to be controlled actually. The internal output nonlinear capacitance generates appropriate amounts of the 2nd and 3rd harmonic voltage components and does not need any complicated matching networks for the harmonic impedance matching. We simulate the optimum load and source impedances for the target frequency bands and match the fundamental impedances in the target impedance area. For operating frequency from 0.9 GHz to 3.6 GHz, output power is varied from 39.5 dBm to 43.4 dBm, drain efficiency from 48% to 66.7% and the gain is 9.5~13.4 dB. Although this PA covers a very wide range of frequencies, it can provide high efficiency using simple matching networks.