High efficiency, highly compact L-Band power amplifier for DECT application

A high efficiency power amplifier is presented that meets the requirements for low Vdd voltage, and high level of integration for the Digital European Cordless Telephone (DECT) commercial market. It makes use of the high power-added-efficiency of the MESFET device in saturated class-AB, and uses harmonic enhancement for the matching circuits. The design was studied for Robustness and the MMIC is integrating most of the biasing circuits on chip. The only added element is the output matching circuit for the last stage of amplification. The MMIC three stage amplifier achieves over 27dBm of output power, 50% drain efficiency with 0dBm input power and a 3.0 Volts bias supply.