Novel integrated antenna for LINC power amplifiers

Both theoretical and experimental results of a novel integrated antenna for LINC power amplifiers are presented. The integrated antenna can also serve as a power combiner, ensuring maximum power efficiency. This will be a significant advance on current LINC and CALLIUM systems, where the circuit level power combiner losses degrade overall efficiency. The concept is explained and one example antenna at 1.8 GHz is designed, fabricated and measured. The measured results show that the antenna achieves good impedance matching characteristics under both the common-mode and the differential-mode excitations. Radiation patterns are also presented.