High efficiency RF power amplifier using band limited dynamic supply control method

This work describes a dynamic power supply method for improving power amplifier efficiency. The proposed band limited dynamic supply control (BLDSC) processes the envelope of transmitting signal into a bandwidth limited supply control signal. With the aid of a switching mode DC-DC convertor, the processed control signal can be reconstructed to the supply terminal of power amplifier (PA) for reducing supply voltage at low output level. The proposed configuration is hardware efficient and improves the efficiency of PA without sacrificing the input signal bandwidth. A power amplifier module is realized and tested using the 10 MHz WiMAX standard. Experimental results show a maximum 50% DC power consumption reduction under 10 MHz signal bandwidth.