Design of dual-band matching network for highly efficient power amplifier

Abstract

In the last decades wireless communications has been growing tremendously and given that the trend will most likely continue at a cumulative pace it is imperative that in the future, the transceivers designed need to operate at a near ideal energy efficiency on new frequency bands demanded by the 5G standard. Since transmitters are the corner stone of any wireless communication systems and that power amplifier (PA) is a high power consuming device within it. It is evident that the design of a highly efficient PA might tackle the significant portion of power loss within RF and microwave systems. The design of PA proposed in this work is aimed at dual band frequencies based on the LTE standards of LTE 42 and LTE 43 having range of 3.4 GHz to 3.6 GHz and 3.6 GHz to 3.8 GHz respectively. The design of a PA begins at characterizing the transistor employed then followed by conjugate matching of the input aimed at the gate. In the design for a highly efficient power amplifier, the design of the OMN plays a pivotal role. This is usually achieved by employing load pull techniques aimed at the drain to find the optimum impedance requirement at desired frequency. Then by employing band-pass filters aimed only to allow the two LTE bands to pass through will cause all the other harmonic frequencies suppression. Having an ideal efficiency of 100% and their simplistic design over other PA classes makes the Class E amplifier a viable choice. Although theoretically Class E amplifier have an ideal efficiency, we expect by achieving 60% to 80% efficiency will be an acceptable target since in practice the efficiency largely depends on the type of transistor being implemented in the PA system.