HEMT GaAs/GaN power amplifiers architecture with discrete dynamic voltage bias control in envelope tracking RF transmitter for W-CDMA signals

Abstract

A new approach to the average efficiency improvement based on a combined 2-PAs architecture is presented. It uses discrete power control and dynamic supply voltage, which allows enhanced efficiency at low power level. It enables envelope tracking RF transmitter with higher average efficiency than classical approach. At 2.14 GHz CW we got an average efficiency of 42.5%, 6.1% better than the classical approach with equal peak P out = 35 dBm. The peak increment of PAE is 13.3% at 16.4 dB of power back-off.Index Terms -envelope tracking, average efficiency, GaN PA, dynamic voltage bias control.

DC analysis and design of a PWM buck converter operated as a dynamic power supply

“…The supply voltage can be toggled between two or more discrete levels, or varied continuously. Discrete‐level dynamic power supplies can be used with certain classes of PAs to improve baseline efficiency . However, if the dynamic supply is continuously variable over a wide range of voltage, it can be used both to improve the efficiency of current‐source PAs and provide efficient AM for switch‐mode PAs .…”

GaN power amplifiers with supply modulation

“…For any of the architectures to be practical, the gain in performance needs to be significant to warrant the increased complexity and cost. A summary of relevant contributions applying supply modulation or other methods is shown in Table I [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20].…”