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Evaluation of GaN technology in Doherty power amplifier architectures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2010

Paolo Colantonio ,
Franco Giannini ,
Rocco Giofrè  and
Luca Piazzon
Paolo Colantonio
Affiliation:
Electronic Engineering Department, Università di Roma Tor Vergata – Via del Politecnico 1, 00133 Rome, Italy.
Franco Giannini
Affiliation:
Electronic Engineering Department, Università di Roma Tor Vergata – Via del Politecnico 1, 00133 Rome, Italy.
Rocco Giofrè*
Affiliation:
Electronic Engineering Department, Università di Roma Tor Vergata – Via del Politecnico 1, 00133 Rome, Italy.
Luca Piazzon
Affiliation:
Electronic Engineering Department, Università di Roma Tor Vergata – Via del Politecnico 1, 00133 Rome, Italy.
*
Corresponding author: R. Giofrè Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

The aim of the present paper is to highlight the possible benefits coming from the use of the GaN high electron-mobility transistor (HEMT) technology in the Doherty power amplifier (DPA) architecture. In particular, the attention is focused on the capabilities and the relevant drawbacks of a GaN HEMT technology when designing DPAs. A deep discussion of the DPA's design guidelines is also presented through the realization of three prototypes implementing different design solutions and working at 2.14 GHz. The first example is a tuned load DPA (TL-DPA), which show an average drain efficiency of 40.7% with 3 W of saturated output power in the obtained 6 dB of output back-off. The second DPA was designed implementing a class F harmonic termination for the main device, which allows an improvement of roughly 15% in output power and efficiency behavior with respect to the TL-DPA. The last DPA was realized implementing a single output matching network for both main and auxiliary devices, which allows a relevant reduction in the size of the resulting DPA, without downgrading the overall performances.

Keywords

Doherty amplifierGaNHigh efficiency
Type
Original Article
Information
International Journal of Microwave and Wireless Technologies , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , February 2010 , pp. 75 - 84
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and the European Microwave Association 2010

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