Analysis and design of a novel concurrent Class B/J continuum power amplifier

Abstract

In this paper, a novel concurrent Class B/J continuum mode is presented based on waveform shaping of current and voltage. The behavior characteristics and performances of power amplifiers (PAs) in concurrent dual-band mode are investigated in detail. According to the analysis of proposed concurrent mode, the optimal load impedances at fundamental, harmonic and intermodulation (IM) frequencies are related to the magnitude ratio of the two carriers. Comparing with concurrent Class-B mode, two parameters α, β can be configured independently in the proposed concurrent mode, which provides more freedom and flexibility for design without output power and drain efficiency degradation. In order to verify the proposed theory, a 1.9/2.35 GHz dual-band power amplifier based on proposed concurrent mode is designed, fabricated and measured. Experimental results show that when the PA is driven by two 10 MHz LTE signals concurrently with total 9.2 dB peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR), the total average power is 36.0 dBm with 40.6% drain efficiency, which indicates a good concurrent performance.