Wideband Power Amplifier Based On Wilkinson Power Divider For S-Band Satellite Communications

This paper presents design and simulation of wideband power amplifier based on multi-section Wilkinson power divider. Class-A topology and ATF-511P8 transistor have been used. Advanced Design System (ADS) software used to simulate the designed power amplifier. The simulation results show an input return loss (S11)10 dB over the entire bandwidth, and an output power around 28dBm at the Centre frequency of 3GHz. The designed amplifier is stable over the entire bandwidth (K>1). Inter-modulation distortion is -65.187dBc which is less than-50dBc. The designed amplifier can be used for the microwave applications which include weather radar, satellite communication, wireless networking, mobile, and TV. © 2019 Institute of Advanced Engineering and Science. All rights reserved

Wideband power amplifier based on Wilkinson power divider for s-band satellite communications

This paper presents design and simulation of wideband power amplifier based on multi-section Wilkinson power divider. Class-A topology and ATF-511P8 transistor have been used. Advanced Design System (ADS) software used to simulate the designed power amplifier. The simulation results show an input return loss (S11)<-10dB, gain (S21)>10 dB over the entire bandwidth, and an output power around 28dBm at the Centre frequency of 3GHz. The designed amplifier is stable over the entire bandwidth (K>1). Inter-modulation distortion is -65.187dBc which is less than -50dBc. The designed amplifier can be used for the microwave applications which include weather radar, satellite communication, wireless networking, mobile, and TV

Ultra-wideband CMOS power amplifier for wireless body area network applications: a review

A survey on ultra-wideband complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) power amplifiers for wireless body area network (WBAN) applications is presented in this paper. Formidable growth in the CMOS integrated circuits technology enhances the development in biomedical manufacture. WBAN is a promising mechanism that collects essential data from wearable sensors connected to the network and transmitted it wirelessly to a central patient monitoring station. The ultra-wideband (UWB) technology exploits the frequency band from 3.1 to 10.6 GHz and provides no interference to other communication systems, low power consumption, low-radiated power, and high data rate. These features permit it to be compatible with medical applications. The demand target is to have one transceiver integrated circuit (IC) for WBAN applications, consequently, UWB is utilized to decrease the hardware complexity. The power amplifier (PA) is the common electronic device that employing in the UWB transmitter to boost the input power to the desired output power and then feed it to the antenna of the transmitter. The advance in the design and implementation of ultra-wideband CMOS power amplifiers enhances the performance of the UWB-transceivers for WBAN applications. A review of recently published CMOS PA designs is reported in this paper with comparison tables listing wideband power amplifiers' performance

Second source power amplifier evaluation for Propsim channel emulator

Abstract. In this thesis, a Power Amplifier (PA) for Keysight Technologies’ PROPSIM F64 channel emulator transceiver is presented. The main characteristics and performance of a PA are examined and optional models for existing PA are evaluated. The main reason for an optional model is the cost and complexity of current PA with its two-sided bias voltage. In this work, the most important characteristic of a PA is the gain flatness on the operating band. Since the printed circuit board space (PCB) is very limited, the whole frequency band must be taken care of with single PA. The relevance of linearity, gain and current consumption in channel emulator transceiver are also elaborated. In the beginning of the evaluation, there were three suitable candidates for the PA. The S-parameters of first candidate were measured in laboratory on an evaluation board with a network analyzer. The measurements indicate that the upper frequency response is out of specifications. For the second option, the effect of bias inductor on the frequency response is analyzed. Since the biasing has an effect on the upper and lower ends of the response, a new measurement with a broadband inductor is carried out. Even with better biasing, the first PA variant cannot reach the specification, at least without further component tuning. During the evaluation process, the hardware team received a preproduction model of a PA from a known semiconductor supplier to be tested as a new candidate. The S-parameters of this new variant are also measured and it is observed that this variant has such good frequency response, matching, current consumption biasing and physical size that there is no need for further evaluation at this point.Vaihtoehtoisen tehovahvistimen evaluaatio Propsim kanavaemulaattoriin. Tiivistelmä. Tässä kandidaatintyössä esitellään tehovahvistin Keysight Technologies PROPSIM F64 kanavaemulaattorin lähetinvastaanottimeen. Tehovahvistimen tärkeimmät ominaisuudet sekä suorituskyky, kuten taajuuskaistan tasaisuus, lineaarisuus ja virrankulutus, käydään läpi ja olemassaolevalle tehovahvistimelle evaluoidaan vaihtoehtoisia malleja. Pääsyy vaihtoehtoisen tehovahvistimen etsimiselle on nykyisen tehovahvistimen kalleus ja sen käyttämä kaksipuoleinen käyttöjännite, jonka toteutus nostaa osaltaan laitteen valmistuskustannuksia. Tässä työssä tehovahvistimen tärkeimmäksi ominaisuudeksi määräytyy vasteen tasaisuus koko käytettävissä olevalla taajuusalueella. Johtuen piirilevytilan puutteesta, koko taajuusalue on katettava samalla vahvistimella. Myös vahvistimen lineaarisuuden, vahvistuksen ja virrankulutuksen vaikutusta kanavaemulaattorin suorituskykyyn analysoidaan työssä. Evaluaation alussa tehovahvistinvaihtoehtoina on kolme erilaista vaihtoehtoa. Näistä ensimmäisen S-parametrit mitataan laboratoriossa evaluaatiolevyllä piirianalysaattorin avulla. Mittaustuloksista voidaan todeta, ettei ensimmäinen testattu vahvistinvaihtoehto yllä annettuihin spesifikaatioihin, varsinkaan taajuusvasteen yläpään osalta. Tästä johtuen tehovahvistimen biasoinnin vaikutusta taajuusvasteeseen analysoidaan toisena vaihtoehtona ja todetaan, että biasoinnilla on vaikutus sekä taajuuskaistan ala- että yläpäähän. Ensimmäisen vahvistimen taajuusvaste mitataan laajakaistaisella biaskelalla. Mittaustuloksista voidaan todeta, että vastetta ei saada riittävän hyväksi ainakaan yksinkertaisilla komponenttimuutoksilla. Mittausten aikana testattavaksi saadaan uudeksi vaihtoehdoksi esituotantomalli tunnetun piirivalmistajan tehovahvistimesta. Tämän vahvistimen S-parametrit mitataan laboratoriossa ja sen todetaan olevan taajuusvasteeltaan, sovitukseltaan, virrankulutukseltaan, biasoinniltaan ja fyysiseltä kooltaan niin hyvä kompromissi, ettei jatkotutkimuksiin ole tarvetta käyttää enempää aikaa tässä vaiheessa

Design of Wide-band Power Amplifier based on Power Combiner Technique with Low Intermodulation Distortion

RF power amplifiers are one of challenging blocks in designing radio frequency transceivers, this is due to non-linearity behavior of power amplifiers that leads to inter-modulation distortion. This paper presents the design of wide-band power amplifier which combined with parallel coupled line band pass filter at the input and output of power amplifier to allow the only required frequency band to pass through the power amplifier. Class-A topology and ATF-511P8 transistor are used in this design. Advanced Design System software used as a simulation tool to simulate the designed wide-band power amplifier. The simulation results showed an input return loss (S11) which less than -10dB, and gain (S21) is higher than 10 dB over the entire frequency band and considers as flat as well. The designed amplifier is stable over the bandwidth (K>1). Inter-modulation distortion is -56.919dBc which is less than -50dBc with 10dBm input power. The designed amplifier can be used for the microwave applications which include weather radar, satellite communication, wireless networking, mobile, and TV

An Octave-Range, Watt-Level, Fully-Integrated CMOS Switching Power Mixer Array for Linearization and Back-Off-Efficiency Improvement

The power mixer array is presented as a novel power generation approach for non-constant envelope signals. It comprises several power mixer units that are dynamically turned on and off to improve the linearity and back-off efficiency. At the circuit level, the power mixer unit can operate as a switching amplifier to achieve high peak power efficiency. Additional circuit level linearization and back-off efficiency improvement techniques are also proposed. To demonstrate the feasibility of this idea, a fully-integrated octave-range CMOS power mixer array is implemented in a 130 nm CMOS process. It is operational between 1.2 GHz and 2.4 GHz and can generate an output power of +31.3 dBm into an external 50 Ω load with a PAE of 42% and a gain compression of only 0.4 dB at 1.8 GHz. It achieves a PAE of 25%, at an average output power of +26.4 dBm, and an EVM of 4.6% with a non-constant-envelope 16 QAM signal. It can also produce arbitrary signal levels down to -70 dBm of output power with the 16 QAM-modulated signal without any RF gain control circuit

Passive and active components development for broadband applications

Recently, GaN HEMTs have been proven to have numerous physical properties, resulting in transistors with greatly increased power densities when compared to the other well-established FET technologies. This advancement spurred research and product development towards power-band applications that require both high power and high efficiency over the wide band. Even though the use of multiple narrow band PAs covering the whole band has invariably led to better performance in terms of efficiency and noise, there is an associated increase in cost and in the insertion loss of the switches used to toggle between the different operating bands. The goal, now, of the new technology is to replace the multiple narrow band PAs with one broadband PA that has a comparable efficiency performance. In our study here, we have investigated a variety of wide band power amplifiers, including class AB PAs and their implementation in distributed and feedback PAs.Additionally, our investigation has included switching-mode PAs as they are well-known for achieving a relatively high efficiency. Besides having a higher efficiency, they are also less susceptible to parameter variations and could impose a lower thermal stress on the transistors than the conventional-mode PAs. With GaN HEMTs, we have demonstrated: a higher than 37 dBm output power and a more than 30% drain efficiency over 0.02 to 3 GHz for the distributed power amplifier; a higher than 30 dBm output power with more than a 22% drain efficiency over 0.1 to 5 GHz for the feedback amplifier; and at least a 43 dBm output power with a higher than 63% drain efficiency over 0.05 to 0.55 GHz for the class D PA. In many communication applications, however, achieving both high efficiency and linearity in the PA design is required. Therefore, in our research, we have evaluated several linearization and efficiency enhancement techniques.We selected the LInear amplification with Nonlinear Components (LINC) approach. Highly efficient combiner and novel efficiency enhancement techniques like the power recycling combiner and adaptive bias LINC schemes have been successfully developed and verified to achieve a combined high efficiency with a relatively high linearity

A Novel Configuration of a Microstrip Microwave Wideband Power Amplifier for Wireless Application

RF/microwave power amplifier (PA) is one of the components that has a large effect on the overall performance of communication system especially in transmitter system and their design is decided by the parameters of transistor selected. This letter presents a new concept of a wide-band microwave amplifier using scattering parameters that is often used in the radio frequency communication systemas an application of the active integrated antenna[1- 2]. This power amplifier operates from 1.75 GHz to 2.15GHz frequency and it is based on AT-41410 NPN transistor that has a high transition frequency of 10GHz. The proposed Single Stage PA is designed by microstrip technology and simulated with Advanced Design System (ADS) software. The simulation results indicate good performances; the small power gain (S21) is changed between 11.8 and 10dB. For the input reflection coefficient (S11) is varied between -11 and -22.5dB. Regarding the output reflection coefficient (S22) is varied between -13.1 and -18.7dB over the wide frequency band of 1.75-2.15GHz and stability without oscillating over a wide range of frequencies

Highly Linear Filtering TIA for 5G wireless standard and beyond

The demand for high data rates in emerging wireless standards is a result of the growing number of wireless device subscribers. This demand is met by increasing the channel bandwidth in accordance with historical trends. As MIMO technology advances, more bands and antennas are expected to be used. The most recent 5G standard makes use of mm-wave bands above 24GHz to expand the channel bandwidth. Channel bandwidth can exceed 2GHz when carrier aggregation is used. From the receiver’s point of view, this makes the baseband filter’s design, which is often a TIA, more difficult. This is due to the fact that as the bandwidth approaches the GHz range, the TIA’s UGBW should be more than 5GHz and it should have a high loop gain up to high frequencies. A closed-loop TIA with configurable bandwidth up to 1.5GHz is described in this scenario. Operational Transconductance Amplifier (OTA) closed in shunt-feedback is the foundation of the TIA. The proposed OTA is based on FeedForward topology (FF) together with inductive peaking technique to ensure stability rather than using the traditional Miller compensation technique. The TIA is able to produce GLoop unity gain bandwidth of 7.5GHz and high loop gain (i.e. 27dB @ 1GHz) using this method. The mixer and LNA’s linearity will benefit from this. Utilizing TSMC 28nm CMOS technology, a prototype has been created using this methodology. The output integrated noise from 20MHz to 1.5GHz is lower than 300μVrms with a power consumption of 17mW, and the TIA achieves In-band OIP3 of 33dBm. Additionally, a direct-conversion receiver for 5G applications is described. The 7GHz RF signal is down-converted to baseband by the receiver. Two cascaded LNTAs based on a common-gate transformer-based design make up the frontend. With an RF gain of 80mS and a gain variability of 31dB, it provides wideband matching from 6GHz to 8GHz. A double-balanced passive mixer is driven by the LNTA. The channel bandwidth from 50MHz to 2GHz is covered by two baseband paths. The first path, called as the low frequency path (LF), covers the channel bandwidth ranging from 50MHz to 400 MHz. In contrast, the second path, called as the high frequency path (HF), covers the channel bandwidth between 800MHz and 2GHz. Two baseband provide gain variability of 14dB, making the overall receiver able to have a gain configurability from 45dB to 0dB. Out-of-band (OOB) selectivity at 4 times the band-edge is greater than 33dB for each configurability. When the gain is at its maximum, the noise figure is less than 5.8dB, and the slope of the noise rise as the gain falls is less than 0.7dB/dB. The receiver guarantee an IB-OIP3 larger than 21dBm for any gain configuration. The receiver has been implemented in TSMC 28nm CMOS technology, consuming 51mW for LF path and 68mW for HF path. The measurement results are in perfect accordance with the requirements of the design

Ultra-Compact mm-Wave Monolithic IC Doherty Power Amplifier for Mobile Handsets

YesThis work develops a novel dynamic load modulation Power Amplifier (PA) circuity that can provide an optimum compromise between linearity and efficiency while covering multiple cellular frequency bands. Exploiting monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMIC) technology, a fully integrated 1W Doherty PA architecture is proposed based on 0.1 µm AlGaAs/InGaAs Depletion- Mode (D-Mode) technology provided by the WIN Semiconductors foundry. The proposed wideband DPA incorporates the harmonic tuning Class-J mode of operation, which aims to engineer the voltage waveform via second harmonic capacitive load termination. Moreover, the applied post-matching technique not only reduces the impedance transformation ratio of the conventional DPA, but also restores its proper load modulation. The simulation results indicate that the monolithic drive load modulation PA at 4 V operation voltage delivers 44% PAE at the maximum output power of 30 dBm at the 1 dB compression point, and 34% power-added efficiency (PAE) at 6 dB power back-off (PBO). A power gain flatness of around 14 ± 0.5 dB was achieved over the frequency band of 23 GHz to 27 GHz. The compact MMIC load modulation technique developed for the 5G mobile handset occupies the die area of 3.2.This research was funded by the European Regional Development Fund (FEDER), through COMPETE 2020, POR ALGARVE 2020, Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) under i-Five Project (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-030500). This work is also part of the POSITION-II project funded by the ECSEL joint Undertaking under grant number Ecsel-345 7831132-Postitio-II-2017-IA. This work is supported by FCT/MCTES through national funds and when applicable co-funded EU funds under the project UIDB/50008/2020-UIDP/50008/2020. The authors would like to thank the WIN Semiconductors foundry for providing the MMIC GaAs pHEMT PDKs and technical support. This work is supported by the Project TEC2017-88242-C3-2-R- Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación e Universidades and EU-FEDER funding