High-efficiency 5-watt power amplifier with harmonic tuning

Author

Kopp, B. ; Heston, D.D.

Author_Institution

Texas Instrum. Inc., Dallas, TX, USA

fYear

1988

fDate

25-27 May 1988

Firstpage

839

Abstract

An X-band power amplifier using harmonic tuning and a GaAs FET is described. The amplifier has demonstrated 36% power-added efficiency with 5 W of output power and a 6.0-dB gain at 10 GHz. The key to this design is determining and matching the optimum load impedance for power-added efficiency at the first two harmonics. Nonlinear models were used to study the effects of harmonic tuning and to determine the optimum harmonic terminations. Two amplifiers were designed that demonstrated high-efficiency power amplification at the 0.5-W and 5-W power levels, respectively. The effects of harmonic loading were demonstrated in the 0.5-W amplifier, where the maximum efficiency measured for a device tuned only at the fundamental was 44%, while the measured efficiency of the amplifier with optimum harmonic tuning was 49.3%.<>

Keywords

III-V semiconductors; gallium arsenide; microwave amplifiers; power amplifiers; solid-state microwave circuits; tuning; 0.5 W; 10 GHz; 36 to 49.3 percent; 5 W; 6 dB; GaAs; III-V semiconductors; SHF; X-band; harmonic tuning; high-efficiency power amplification; microwave FET circuit; nonlinear models; optimum harmonic terminations; optimum load impedance; power amplifier; power-added efficiency; FETs; Frequency; Gallium arsenide; High power amplifiers; Impedance; Instruments; Power amplifiers; Power generation; Power measurement; Power system harmonics;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Microwave Symposium Digest, 1988., IEEE MTT-S International

Conference_Location

New York, NY, USA

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/MWSYM.1988.22163

Filename

22163