A Dual-Band High Efficiency Class-F GaN HEMT Power Amplifier for Wireless Communication

Abstract

A class-F high-efficiency GaN power amplifier (PA) for concurrent dual-band operation at 1.84 and 3.5 GHz frequencies is proposed. A novel dual-band bandpass filter with 4-sections stepped impedance resonators (SIRs), which rejects the annoying frequencies of the second and third harmonics in the dual-band and contributes greatly to efficiency improvement of PA. The proposed 4-sections SIR filter has the harmonic rejection of more than 20/26.7 dB in 1.84/3.5 GHz, respectively, which is sufficient for rejecting harmonics, and insertion loss of less 0.2 dB. The experimental results show that output power of 40 dBm and 11 dB of gain at the two bands were obtained. The maximum power added efficiency (PAE) are obtained 75% at 1.84 GHz and 68.4% at 3.5 GHz frequencies. Linearity results using 10-MHz 16-QAM signal at 1.84 GHz and a 10-MHz WiMAX signal at 3.5 GHz, show an adjacent channel leakage ratio (ACLR) of −46.6 and −42.3 dBc with the average output power of 37.6 and 36.1 dBm at 1.84 and 3.5 GHz, respectively.

KEYWORDS:

• Adjacent channel leakage ratio
• Class-F
• Concurrent
• Dual-band
• Power amplifier
• Stepped impedance resonators

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sh. Rezaei Borjlu

Shaban Rezaei Borjlu received BS (1999) and MS (2001) degrees in electrical and electronics engineering from Shiraz University and KN Toosi University of Technology, respectively, both in Iran. He joined the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering in Ashtian Islamic Azad University in Ashtian-Iran since 2004. Currently, he is PhD candidate in electrical and electronics engineering in Science and Research Branch of the Islamic Azad University in Tehran-Iran. His research contains linear and non-linear microwave/RF circuits and systems design, millimeter wave circuits design, and MMIC technology. Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

M. S. Khadem

Mohammad Saeed Khadem received BS (2013) and MS (2017) degrees in electrical and electronics engineering from Islamic Azad University and Shahid Beheshti, respectively, and the PhD degree in electronics engineering from Ashtian Islamic Azad University. Ashtian, Iran. Currently, he is doing his research in the area of high power RF&VLSI design in Ashtian Islamic Azad University. Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]