On the Continuity of Continuous Inverse Class F Power Amplifiers

Broadband and high efficiency operation of power amplifiers (PAs) are highly desirable for smart transmitting radio frequency (RF) front-ends. Among different techniques, continuous mode harmonic tuned PAs offer attractive solution because of their methodological design procedures. However, the theory of such continuous mode PAs assumes constant knee voltage operation which varies over operating drain current in a real device. This work examines the performance of continuous mode inverse class F PAs considering variable knee voltage which predicts PA performance more accurately of a real device. Analysis shows about 7% output power and efficiency drop from ideal value which is validated with load-pull measurements.

[1]  F. Raab.  Class-F power amplifiers with maximally flat waveforms , 1997 .

[2]  A. L. Clarke,et al.  On the Extension of the Continuous Class-F Mode Power Amplifier , 2011, IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques.

[3]  Chul Soon Park,et al.  Analysis of High-Efficiency Power Amplifier Using Second Harmonic Manipulation: Inverse Class-F/J Amplifiers , 2011, IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques.

[4]  P. J. Tasker,et al.  The Continuous Inverse Class-F Mode With Resistive Second-Harmonic Impedance , 2012, IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques.

[5]  Jose C. Pedro,et al.  A Simple Method to Estimate the Output Power and Efficiency Load–Pull Contours of Class-B Power Amplifiers , 2015, IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques.

[6]  Fadhel M. Ghannouchi,et al.  A Methodology for Implementation of High-Efficiency Broadband Power Amplifiers With Second-Harmonic Manipulation , 2016, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II: Express Briefs.

[7]  Fadhel M. Ghannouchi,et al.  Generalized design of continuous‐mode second harmonic tuned amplifiers , 2016 .

[8]  Tushar Sharma,et al.  Generalized Continuous Class-F Harmonic Tuned Power Amplifiers , 2016, IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters.

[9]  Fadhel M. Ghannouchi,et al.  High-Efficiency Input and Output Harmonically Engineered Power Amplifiers , 2018, IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques.

[10]  Tushar Sharma,et al.  Input Harmonic Sensitivity in High-Efficiency GaN Power Amplifiers , 2018, 2018 IEEE/MTT-S International Microwave Symposium - IMS.