A 10 Watt S-Band MMIC Power Amplifier With Integrated 100 MHz Switch-Mode Power Supply and Control Circuitry for Active Electronically Scanned Arrays

Bent, G. van der; Hek, Peter de; Geurts, Sander; Telli, Ali; Brouzes, H.; Besselink, Michiel; Vliet, F.E. van

doi:10.1109/jssc.2013.2261194

Cited by 11 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Gaussian-like amplitude modulated pulses can reduce the time sidelobes and spectral leakage. However, amplitude modulation of the RF pulse envelope highly increases the dissipation in the PA [27], [38], [39], unless the PA supply is modulated to track an highly efficient operative regime [27], [38], [39]. To this aim, we consider test signals, S IN , with a pulse duration of 10 µs and 100 µs of repetition period (as the characterization sequence depicted in Fig.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The ML-CO PA is characterized with the techniques presented in Section III and DPD is extracted accordingly. Two control strategies are compared: 1) Fixed Input Power / Fixed Supply: this is the conventional method of driving a radar PA in which the PA power supply is turned on and off during the pulse duration [27], [38]. This operating mode corresponds to the one discussed in Sec.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Multilevel Supply-Modulated Chireix Outphasing With Continuous Input Modulation

Cappello

Barton

Florian

et al. 2017

IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Techn.

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This work presents a dynamic characterization of a multi-level Chireix outphasing (ML-CO) power amplifier (PA) with modulated signals. The ML-CO technique combines the advantages of envelope tracking and outphasing architectures by limiting the supply modulation to discrete levels with an efficient power-DAC modulator and using outphasing for fine amplitude control. We describe an experimental test bench that supplies the required phase-and time-aligned modulated signals for outphasing and supply modulation simultaneously. Pulsed characterization is used to design a multi-level memory-less polynomial DPD. The linearized ML-CO GaN X-band MMIC PA is demonstrated with fixed input drive levels for 9.3-dB PAPR, 1.4-MHz and 11.3-dB PAPR, 10-MHz LTE signals with a 9.7 GHz carrier. For both signals, the average total power consumption is reduced by a factor of two when supply modulation is used. An investigation of control signal generation strategies is presented, including combinations of discrete supply and continuous input modulation. A simple exponential function tracks the optimal efficiency trajectory of the ML-CO PA, enabling overall efficiency improvements within 9 and 27 percentage points. This control strategy is applied to radar pulses with amplitude shaping and frequency chirp, with efficiency improvement of up to 11.8 percentage points compared to constant-supply operation, with 29 dB improvement in spectral confinement.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multilevel Supply-Modulated Chireix Outphasing With Continuous Input Modulation

Cappello

Barton

Florian

et al. 2017

IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Techn.

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“…Low power GaN modulators have been reported in [7][8][9][10]. A power converter integrated GaAs HPA was demonstrated in [11] A GaN high power switch could be designed with large control voltages and the high current capability for integration with an HPA. This paper reports on the development of high frequency, high efficiency, integrated supply modulators using RF HEMTs as power switches.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Integrated power switches for X-Band PA

Pereira

Parker

Heimlich

et al. 2015

2015 IEEE Radar Conference (RadarCon)

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This paper reports on the development of high frequency, high efficiency integrated supply modulators for airborne and space based high power amplifier modules. The power switches within the integrated modulators were RF HEMTs optimized for power amplifier applications. The modulators were fabricated in commercial foundry GaN process and delivered 10W of output power with an efficiency of 83.5% while switching at a frequency of 100 MHz. Development of high frequency supply modulators paves the way for integration of the HPA and modulators onto the MMIC die and on-chip drain bias modulation for efficiency enhancement of the HPA.

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“…A typical transmit module has an efficient nonlinear deep class-AB to class-C PA that transmits constant-envelope pulses with significant spectral content over a large bandwidth [1]. Advanced radar waveforms can be used to provide spectral confinement, improve range ambiguity, and decrease detectability for active electronically scanned arrays [2]. In search and tracking radar, target detection and identity discrimination can be improved [3], while in weather radar suppression Manuscript…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Various types of SM following up on the early envelope elimination and restoration (EER) technique [17] have been applied to improve efficiency of transmitters for high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) communication signals [8]- [13]. In [2], a pulsewidth modulation (PWM) 100-MHz switching converter is used for linear pulse shaping of an integrated S-band PA, with a total efficiency of 27%. For pulse shaping of a hybrid S-band GaN PA in [14], a variable supply [15] is implemented as a simple damped resonant circuit with efficiency greater than 90% at 6-W output power and a total efficiency 50% and greater than 65% for the PAPR values of 8 and 4 dB, respectively.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Efficient Programmable Pulse Shaping for $X$ -Band GaN MMIC Radar Power Amplifiers

Florian

Cappello

Niessen

et al. 2017

IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Techn.

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This paper presents a supply modulated X-band 12-W peak power transmitter that maintains an average efficiency greater than 50% for various shapes of amplitudemodulated pulses. The main power amplifier is a two-stage GaN-on-SiC MMIC with a peak efficiency of 65%, while the pulse envelope modulator is a 95% efficient hybrid 3-b power DAC implemented with GaN-on-Si transistor switches. Envelope shaping of a pulsed waveform results in improved spectral confinement of greater than 15 dB for the first sideband compared with constant-envelope pulses, with over 20 points improvement in total efficiency. The combination of supply modulation and digital predistortion is shown to result in high composite (total) efficiency of over 55%, with simultaneous high dynamic range and with flexible digitally programmable pulse shaping. Index Terms-Envelope tracking (ET), power DAC (pDAC), radar pulse shaping, spectral confinement, supply modulator. I. INTRODUCTIONT HE majority of radar systems operate the high power amplifier (PA) of the transmitter in pulsed regime: the characteristics of the RF/microwave pulses in terms of duty cycle, pulsewidth, repetition frequency, transmitted power, and pulse shaping directly affect radar performance [1]. Solid-state phased array radar is enabled by a large number of transmit modules that produce very high transmit powers. A typical transmit module has an efficient nonlinear deep class-AB to class-C PA that transmits constant-envelope pulses with significant spectral content over a large bandwidth [1]. Advanced radar waveforms can be used to provide spectral confinement, improve range ambiguity, and decrease detectability for active electronically scanned arrays [2]. In search and tracking radar, target detection and identity discrimination can be improved [3], while in weather radar suppression Manuscript

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A 10 Watt S-Band MMIC Power Amplifier With Integrated 100 MHz Switch-Mode Power Supply and Control Circuitry for Active Electronically Scanned Arrays

Cited by 11 publications

References 27 publications

Multilevel Supply-Modulated Chireix Outphasing With Continuous Input Modulation

Multilevel Supply-Modulated Chireix Outphasing With Continuous Input Modulation

Integrated power switches for X-Band PA

Efficient Programmable Pulse Shaping for $X$ -Band GaN MMIC Radar Power Amplifiers

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