An analysis of higher‐order of a GaAs FET depending on IMD source impedance and its application to a design of low‐distortion MMIC power amplifiers

Although the π/4 phase shift modulation schemes used in quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) are important approaches to ensuring efficient frequency usage in digital portable telephone systems, they also require linearity of the power amplifiers, they also require linearity of the power amplifiers, which is an undesirable constraint from the standpoint of efficiency. In this work, we describe a unified approach to this problem based on the idea that distortion can be effectively decreased by creating dips or “bumps” in the intermod characteristics, due to the dependence of the adjacent channel power (ACP) leakage on input power. For the special case of an impedance Zes connected to the gate of a FET, we use Volterra series to quantitatively demonstrate how the appearance of such dips or bumps is related both to Zes and to the fifth intermod (IM5). We then show analytically that when these dips or bumps are generated effectively, they can suppress IM5. Finally, we show that the resulting decrease in intermodulation distortion and improved efficiency make this method useful in the design of MMIC power amplifiers used in Personal Handy Phone (PHS) service. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electron Comm Jpn Pt 2, 85(4): 10–21, 2002; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/ecjb.1100