High-Efficiency High-Power Wideband Power Amplifier Design With Hybrid Class AB

This letter presents a wideband (1.8–6 GHz) high efficiency Gallium Nitride (GaN) power amplifier (PA). The design of the PA employs an approach of large signal bandwidth (BW)-current conduction angle (CCA) relationship based on the harmonic distortion (HD) performance. This is a new approach and targets to obtain better efficiency while keeping increase of HD low in the BW. The fabricated PA offers power gain (<inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$P_{\text {gain}}$</tex-math> </inline-formula>) of 9.6 dB, an output power (<inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$P_{\text {out}}$</tex-math> </inline-formula>) of 37.6 dBm, a power added efficiency (PAE) ranging from 42% to 51%, and HD levels below −20 dBc throughout the 1.8–6 GHz frequency band.