Design of 0.6–0.8-GHz and 1.6–1.9-GHz Dual-Band PA With Peak PAEs of Over 70% by NPE Method With Dynamical Continuous-Mode Criteria

Abstract

A high-efficiency concurrent dual-band GaN power amplifier (PA) is designed and fabricated based on the network parameter extraction (NPE) method, where the expanded optimum load impedance spaces of continuous modes are applied to construct the NPE criteria to facilitate harmonic tuning. A swallow-spit process is proposed to improve the effectiveness of NPE by dynamically changing the criteria. The prototype design process verified that the proposed algorithm is easy to be implemented, which avoids the cumbersome tunings and complex numerical derivations on the parameters of the dual-band output matching networks. Measurement results demonstrate that the fabricated GaN PA achieves saturated output powers of 40.5 dBm ± 0.4 dBm and 41 dBm ± 0.3 dBm over dual bands of 0.6-0.8 GHz and 1.6-1.9 GHz with peak PAEs of 71%-74% and 68%-73%, respectively.