This paper studies the behaviors of power amplifier(PA) driven by a single-carrier continuous wave(CW) signal and a two-carrier CW signal both in theory and simulation, and explains why the traditional dual-band PA failed to perform satisfactory results when a two-carrier CW signal is applied to, called concurrently. Besides that, an evaluation standard of concurrent dual-band PA was presented to value its performance. Solution was given with design and fabrication of a concurrent 1.85 GHz/2.65 GHz class F PA, employing a 10 W GaN HEMT device from Cree, CGH40010, whose measurement shows the saturated output power is 40.6 d Bm and 40.8dB m with drain efficiencies(DE) of 77.4% and 75.3% at 1.85 GHz and 2.65 GHz, respectively. On the other hand, we see that the peak DE achieves 59.7% with an output power of 39.9 dB m in concurrent mode, which follows up with the standard.
YANG Qian-kunLIU Yuan-anYU Cui-pingLI Shu-lanLI Jiu-chao
The high power microwave(HPM) damage effect on the Al Ga As/In Ga As pseudomorphic high electron mobility transistor(p HEMT) is studied by simulation and experiments. Simulated results suggest that the HPM damage to p HEMT is due to device burn-out caused by the emerging current path and strong electric field beneath the gate. Besides, the results demonstrate that the damage power threshold decreases but the energy threshold slightly increases with the increase of pulse-width, indicating that HPM with longer pulse-width requires lower power density but more energy to cause the damage to p HEMT. The empirical formulas are proposed to describe the pulse-width dependence. Then the experimental data validate the pulse-width dependence and verify that the proposed formula P = 55τ-0.06 is capable of quickly and accurately estimating the HPM damage susceptibility of p HEMT. Finally the interior observation of damaged samples by scanning electron microscopy(SEM) illustrates that the failure mechanism of the HPM damage to p HEMT is indeed device burn-out and the location beneath the gate near the source side is most susceptible to burn-out, which is in accordance with the simulated results.
An electromagnetic pulse(EMP)-induced damage model based on the internal damage mechanism of the Ga As pseudomorphic high electron mobility transistor(PHEMT) is established in this paper. With this model, the relationships among the damage power, damage energy, pulse width and signal amplitude are investigated. Simulation results show that the pulse width index from the damage power formula obtained here is higher than that from the empirical formula due to the hotspot transferring in the damage process of the device. It is observed that the damage energy is not a constant, which decreases with the signal amplitude increasing, and then changes little when the signal amplitude reaches up to a certain level.
An asymmetric Doherty architecture based on three identical transistors is proposed in this paper. This proposed three.way topology reduces the difficulty in designing matching networks brought by the low optimal impedance of high power transistors. And the inverted Doherty topology as well as carefully chosen value of load impedance makes it possible to extend the bandwidth of high power amplifiers. Besides, bias networks of this proposed three.way architecture are also carefully considered to improve the linearity. The proposed high power three.way Doherty power amplifier(3W.DPA) is designed and fabricated based on theoretic analysis. Its maximum output power is about 600 Watts and the drain efficiency is above 35.5% at 9d B back off output power level from 1.9GHz to 2.2 GHz and the saturated drain efficiency is above 47% across the whole frequency band. The measured concurrent two.tone results suggest that the linearity of DPA is improved by at least 5d B.
