A Parasitic-Tolerated Design of Compact Inverse Class-F GaN HEMT Power Amplifier With Integrated Matching Network

Abstract

A novel load structure is proposed for designing an inverse class-F (class F−1) power amplifier (PA) with compact size and high power added efficiency (PAE). The proposed load network is implemented entirely with six transmission lines (TLs) and integrates all of main functions: class F−1 harmonic control, biasing, and fundamental output matching in one which typically operate in separate networks in the conventional topologies. The TL parameters of constituent elements are extracted based on derived analytical equations aided by load-pull measurements which tolerate the parasitic effects of a packaged transistor, and then neither extra parasitic compensator nor time-inefficient tuning mechanism is required while both optimal harmonic and fundamental conditions are met. As a result, compact and low insertion loss class F−1 PA is realized. With this design methodology, the implemented PA can exhibits a state-of-the-art performance at 920 MHz with a measured peak PAE of 85.6%, corresponding to gain of 14.7 dB, and output power of 39.7 dBm, and a miniature size of 0.21λ×0.20λ .