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1–8 GHz high efficiency single-stage travelling wave power amplifier

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Abstract

This paper describes a Class-A/AB wideband power amplifier that comprises of a single-stage transistor travelling wave structure in which capacitive coupling and frequency dependent lossy artificial-line are employed at the input of the active device. The proposed technique significantly enhances the amplifier’s gain-bandwidth product, input match and gain flatness performance. To ensure the amplifier delivers a predefined power to the load over its entire operating band 2-to-8 GHz a broadband load-pull technique was applied at the output of the amplifier. To avoid reduction in the amplifier’s bandwidth resulting from parasitic capacitive effects associated with the off-chip choke inductor a wideband RF choke was designed. The 1.31 × 2.93 mm2 power amplifier was fabricated using 0.25 μm GaAs pHEMT MMIC process. The measurement results show that the proposed amplifier delivers an average P sat of 29.5 dBm and P out,1 dB of 26 dBm, and the corresponding PAE levels are 55 and 35 % for the P sat and P out,1 dB, respectively.

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Acknowledgment

The authors wish to acknowledge the assistance and support of The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK Project-1001-107E253).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Faculty of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Istanbul Technical University, 34469, Maslak, Istanbul, Turkey

    Mustafa Sayginer, Metin Yazgi & H. Hakan Kuntman

  2. Faculty of Computing, Centre for Communications Technology, London Metropolitan University, 166-220 Holloway Road, London, N7 8DB, UK

    Bal S. Virdee

Authors
  1. Mustafa Sayginer
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  2. Metin Yazgi
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  3. H. Hakan Kuntman
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  4. Bal S. Virdee
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Correspondence to Mustafa Sayginer.

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Sayginer, M., Yazgi, M., Kuntman, H.H. et al. 1–8 GHz high efficiency single-stage travelling wave power amplifier. Analog Integr Circ Sig Process 74, 111–119 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10470-012-9863-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10470-012-9863-2

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