A high-efficiency SiGe BiCMOS WCDMA power amplifier with dynamic current biasing for improved average efficiency

This paper demonstrates a WCDMA single-stage power amplifier, fabricated in a 0.25 /spl mu/m SiGe BiCMOS process. With dynamic biasing of the collector current, the average power efficiency is improved by more than a factor of two compared to a typical class AB power amplifier. The power amplifier satisfies the 3GPP class-III WCDMA adjacent channel power ratio (ACPR) specifications (ACPR_5M= -33 dBc and ACPR_10M = -58.8 dBc) with 23.9 dBm average channel output power. The measured output power at the 1 dB compression point is 25.9 dBm.

[1]  John F. Sevic,et al.  Statistical characterization of RF power amplifier efficiency for CDMA wireless communication systems , 1997, Proceedings of 1997 Wireless Communications Conference.

[2]  Peter M. Asbeck,et al.  High-efficiency power amplifier using dynamic power-supply voltage for CDMA applications , 1999 .

[3]  Y. Bito,et al.  High efficiency power amplifier module with novel enhancement-mode heterojunction FETs for wide-band CDMA handsets , 2000, GaAs IC Symposium. IEEE Gallium Arsenide Integrated Circuits Symposium. 22nd Annual Technical Digest 2000. (Cat. No.00CH37084).

[4]  V. Aparin,et al.  Effect of out-of-band terminations on intermodulation distortion in common-emitter circuits , 1999, 1999 IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium Digest (Cat. No.99CH36282).

[5]  A. Samelis,et al.  Efficiency improvement techniques at low power levels for linear CDMA and WCDMA power amplifiers , 2002, 2002 IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits (RFIC) Symposium. Digest of Papers (Cat. No.02CH37280).

[6]  David Dening.  Setting bias points: for linear RF amplifiers , 2002 .