Class-E Doherty power amplifier based on harmonic tuning

This letter reports a high-efficiency gallium nitride (GaN) high-electron mobility transistor (HEMT) Doherty power amplifier (DPA) based on the Class-E topology for 3GPP-FDD applications. The harmonic controlling network (HCN) applied in the proposed DPA provides the impedance transformation for the harmonic components so that it achieves significant harmonic suppression. For the proposed DPA , the power added efficiency (PAE) is 62.1% at 37.03 dBm, 5-dB backoff power from saturation output power. For a 1-carrier 3 GPP-FDD signal, the adjacent channel leakage ratio (ACLR) and error vector magnitude (EVM) are achieved 32.16 dB and 6.59%, respectively, at 37.03 dBm. The results prove that the proposed DPA can deliver high efficiency with proper linearity for 3 GPP applications.