Journal
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES
Volume 68, Issue 7, Pages 3172-3183Publisher
IEEE-INST ELECTRICAL ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS INC
DOI: 10.1109/TMTT.2020.2983925
Keywords
Modulation; Wideband; Complexity theory; Couplers; Impedance; Phase control; Balanced amplifier; Doherty; GaN; high efficiency; load modulation; power amplifier (PA); wideband
Categories
Funding
- National Science Foundation [1914875]
- Directorate For Engineering
- Div Of Electrical, Commun & Cyber Sys [1914875] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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This article presents a novel architecture of load-modulated balanced amplifier (LMBA) with a unique load-modulation characteristic different from any existing LMBAs and Doherty power amplifiers (DPAs), which is named pseudo-Doherty LMBA (PD-LMBA). Based on a special combination of control amplifier (carrier) and balanced amplifier (peaking) together with proper phase and amplitude controls, an optimal load-modulation behavior can be achieved for PD-LMBA, leading to maximized efficiency over extended power back-off range. More importantly, the efficiency optimization can be achieved with only a static setting of phase offset at a given frequency, which greatly simplifies the complexity for phase control. Furthermore, the cooperations of the carrier and peaking amplifiers in PD-LMBA are fully decoupled, thus lifting the fundamental bandwidth barrier imposed on the Doherty-based active load modulation. Upon theoretical proof of these discoveries, a wideband RF-input PD-LMBA is physically developed using the GaN technology for experimental demonstration. The prototype achieves a highly efficient performance from 1.5 to 2.7 GHz, e.g., 58%-72% of efficiency at 42.5-dBm peak power and 47%-58% at 10-dB output back-off (OBO). When stimulated by a 10-MHz long term evolution (LTE) signal with a 9.5-dB peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR), the developed PD-LMBA achieves an efficiency of 44%-53% over the entire bandwidth at an average output power of around 33 dBm.
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