A 120 watt, two-stage, LDMOS power amplifier IC at 1.8 GHz for GSM/EDGE applications

A 120 Watt LDMOS radio frequency integrated circuit (RFIC) targeting 1.8 GHz GSM, EDGE, and Evolved EDGE base station applications has been developed using state of the art design techniques and LDMOS technology. The amplifier was designed to cover the 1.8 GHz to 2 GHz GSM bands, and performs exceptionally well under both GSM and EDGE conditions. The two-stage, single-chip design exhibits 27 dB of gain and delivers 132 Watts of output power (1 dB compression; 27 Volt DC supply) with an associated PAE of 51%. Under EDGE modulation, at an average output power of 46 Watts, the EVM is less than 1.6 % and the spectral re-growth is -63 dBc and -78 dBc at 400, and 600 kHz offsets, respectively. This is the highest power, 1.8 to 2 GHz, two-stage RFIC in an over-molded plastic package, reported to date.