The Doherty Power Amplifier With On-Chip Dynamic Bias Control Circuit for Handset Application

A monolithic-microwave integrated-circuit Doherty power amplifier (PA) with an on-chip dynamic bias control circuit for cellular handset application has been designed and implemented. To improve the linearity and efficiency in the operation power ranges, the base and collector biases of the amplifiers, except the drive amplifier of the main path, are controlled according to the average output power. The base biases are controlled using the on-chip circuit and collector biases by the dc/dc chip to reduce the average dc consumption power. The power-added efficiency (PAE) is improved approximately 6% by the base dynamic bias control, and approximately 14% by the collector/base dynamic control from the class AB at Pout=16 dBm, respectively. If the dc/dc converter efficiency is 100%, the PAE could be improved approximately 17.5% from class AB, reaching to 29.2% at Pout=16 dBm. In the intermediate power level from 22 to 28 dBm, the PAE is over 34.3%. The average current consumption of the PA with the dynamic bias control is 22.5 mA in urban and 37.3 mA in suburban code-division multiple-access environments, which are reduced by 36%-46.7%, compared to the normal operation. The adjacent channel power ratio is below 47.5 dBc, and the PAE at the maximum power is approximately 43.3% in the dynamic bias operations