Optimization Technique for High-Gain CMOS Power Amplifier for 5G Applications

In this study, a differential power amplifier (PA) with a high gain of over 30 dB by configuring a three-stage common source unit amplifier was designed. To ensure the stability of the high-gain differential PA, the analysis to apply the capacitive neutralization method to the differential common source PA was conducted. From the analysis, the required neutralized capacitance was quantitatively calculated from the estimated parasitic components of a power cell used in the PA. To verify the feasibility of the proposed optimization technique, a Ka-band PA was designed with a 65 nm RFCMOS process. The measurement results showed a gain of 30.7 dB. The saturated output power was measured as 16.1 dBm, maximum power-added efficiency (PAE) was 29.7%, and P1dB was 13.1 dBm.

Research and Application of Remote Control Test Method of Amplifier Indicators

As we all know, there are many test indicators for amplifiers, including saturated output power, 1dB compressed output power (P-1), harmonic suppression, etc. The saturated output power and 1dB compressed output power are tested step by step, and the harmonic suppression needs to traverse every frequency point to calculate the results, which require testers to pay more time and effort. When there are batches of power amplifiers to be tested, manual testing methods are unrealistic. In order to simplify the test steps, reduce the input of testers, and speed up the test progress, this article introduces a test method about instrument remote control, based on GPIB and C# after the study and research for the GPIB bus of the GPIB instrument. This method calls the VISA library to drive the GPIB card to communicate with the test instrument by SCPI programmable instrument standard commands and the respective remote control commands of each instrument to perform mixed programming with C#. Finally, we can complete the measurement, display and get the data by controlling the GPIB instruments on the PC side.

A 6 GHz Integrated High-Efficiency Class-F−1 Power Amplifier in 65 nm CMOS Achieving 47.8% Peak PAE

This paper reports a “single-transistor” Class-F−1 power amplifier (PA) in 65 nm CMOS, which operates at the microwave center frequency of 6 GHz. The PA is loaded with a Class-F−1 harmonic control network, employing a new “parasitic-aware” topology deduced using a novel iterative algorithm. A dual-purpose output matching network is designed, which not only serves the purpose of output impedance matching, but also reinforces the harmonic control of the Class-F−1 harmonic network. This proposed PA yields a peak power-added efficiency (PAE) of 47.8%, which is one of the highest when compared to previously reported integrated microwave/millimeter-wave PAs in CMOS and SiGe technologies. The amplifier shows a saturated output power of 14.4 dBm along with an overall gain of 13.8 dB.

A 28GHz Power Amplifier with Analog Predistortion Linearizer in 65nm CMOS

This paper proposes that a radio frequency power amplifier is suitable for a 5G millimeter wave. It adopts a three-stage single-ended structure at 28GHz. An analog predistortion linearization method is used to improve the linearity of the power amplifier (PA). As a result, there is a significant improvement in power-added efficiency (PAE) and linearity is achieved. The Ka-band PA is implemented in TSMC 65nm CMOS process. At 1.2V supply voltage, the PA proposed in this paper achieves a saturated output power of 15.9dBm and a PAE of 16%. After linearization, the output power at the 1dB compression point is increased by 2dBm, with efficient gain compensation performance.

Design of a Wideband Doherty Power Amplifier with High Efficiency for 5G Application

This paper discusses the design of a wideband class AB-C Doherty power amplifier suitable for 5G applications. Theoretical analysis of the output matching network is presented, focusing on the impact of the non-ideally infinite output impedance of the auxiliary amplifier in back off, due to the device’s parasitic elements. By properly accounting for this effect, the designed output matching network was able to follow the desired impedance trajectories across the 2.8 GHz to 3.6 GHz range (fractional bandwidth = 25%), with a good trade-off between efficiency and bandwidth. The Doherty power amplifier was designed with two 10 W packaged GaN HEMTs. The measurement results showed that it provided 43 dBm to 44.2 dBm saturated output power and 8 dB to 13.5 dB linear power gain over the entire band. The achieved drain efficiency was between 62% and 76.5% at saturation and between 44% and 56% at 6 dB of output power back-off.

A Power Amplifier with Large High-Efficiency Range for 5G Communication

This paper presents a new method to design a Doherty power amplifier (DPA) with a large, high-efficiency range for 5G communication. This is through analyzing the drain-to-source capacitance (CDS) of DPAs, and adopting appropriate impedance of the peak device. A closed design process is proposed, to design the extended efficiency range DPA based on derived theories. For validation, a DPA with large efficiency range was designed and fabricated by using two equal devices. The measured results showed that the saturated output power was between 43.4 dBm and 43.7 dBm in the target band. Around 70% saturated drain efficiency is obtained with a gain of greater than 11 dB. Moreover, the obtained drain efficiency is larger than 50% at the 10 dB power back-off, when operating at 3.5 GHz. These superior performances illustrate that the implemented DPA can be applied well in 5G communication.

A 4.2-to-5.4 GHz stacked GaAs HBT power amplifier for C-band applications

Purpose Power amplifiers (PAs) play an important role in wireless communications because they dominate system performance. High-linearity broadband PAs are of great value for potential use in multi-band system implementation. The purpose of this paper is to present a cascode power amplifier architecture to achieve high power and high efficiency requirements for 4.2∼5.4 GHz applications. Design/methodology/approach A common emitter (CE) configuration with a stacked common base configuration of heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) is used to achieve high power. T-type matching network is used as input matching network. To increase the bandwidth, the output matching networks are implemented using the two L-networks. Findings By using the proposed method, the stacked PA demonstrates a maximum saturated output power of 26.2 dBm, a compact chip size of 1.17 × 0.59 mm2 and a maximum power-added efficiency of 46.3 per cent. The PA shows a wideband small signal gain with less than 3 dB variation over working frequency. The saturated output power of the proposed PA is higher than 25 dBm between 4.2 and 5.4 GHz. Originality/value The technology adopted for the design of the 4.2-to-5.4 GHz stacked PA is the 2-µm gallium arsenide HBT process. Based on the proposed method, a better power performance of 3 dB improvement can be achieved as compared with the conventional CE or common-source amplifier because of high output stacking impedance.

GaAs Solid State Broadband Power Amplifier for L and S Bands Applications

This chapter provides an insight view of the Broadband Power Amplifier (BPA) design. Basically, the aim of the BPA is to increase the power level of the signal presents at its input terminal up to a prefixed power level at its output terminal in the operating frequency band. The research of a GaAs single stage solid state broadband power amplifier based of ATF13876 which operates in the frequency band ranging from 1.17 GHz to 3 GHz is presented in this chapter. The wider bandwidth circuits are designed by using transmission lines which are intrinsically wideband circuits. With carefully designed biasing and broadband matching networks, unconditionally stability and excellent matching performance are fulfilled over the overall operating bandwidth with a maximum power gain of 17.34 dB and a saturated output power of 17 dBm. Considering the wider bandwidth of the proposed BPA, the latter compares favorably with the contemporary state-of-the-art.