Broadband Sequential Load Modulated Balanced Amplifier With Extended Design Space Using Second Harmonic Manipulation

Abstract

This article presents the design methodology of a broadband radio frequency (RF)-input sequential load modulated balanced amplifier (SLMBA) with extended high-efficiency design space, by introducing the second-harmonic load manipulation over an enlarged range for the control amplifier (CA). The extension of CA load design space not only can provide the time-domain-varying drain current waveform inside the entire design continuum but also allows maintaining high efficiency at output power back-off (OBO) over an extended operation bandwidth. To validate the theory, a broadband SLMBA operating at 2.05–3.65 GHz was designed and fabricated using packaged gallium nitride (GaN) transistors. The implemented power amplifier (PA) attains a measured 45.2–46.8-dBm peak output power. Drain efficiency (DE) of 61.2%–79.7% at saturation and 50.5%–66.2% at 8-dB OBO is achieved throughout the designed bandwidth. When tested with a 100-MHz long-term evolution (LTE) signal with a peak-to-average-power ratio (PAPR) of <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$8$</tex-math> </inline-formula> dB, the proposed SLMBA achieves 50.7%–63.5% average DE over 2.05–3.55 GHz and better than <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$-$</tex-math> </inline-formula> 45.1 dBc adjacent channel power ratio (ACPR) after digital predistortion (DPD).