Compact High-Efficiency High-Power Wideband GaN Amplifier Supporting 395 MHz Instantaneous Bandwidth

A compact, pre-matched gallium-nitride (GaN) device is proposed to support high power, high efficiency, concurrent multiband amplifier applications. Novel in-package matching networks addressing both the input and output of high power GaN active devices are considered. As proof-of-concept, a symmetric Doherty power amplifier (PA) with 55.3 dBm (340 W) peak power is demonstrated to achieve 20% fractional RF bandwidth from 1.805 – 2.2 GHz with high efficiency and low baseband impedance. With digital-predistortion (DPD) compensation, the amplifier achieves 48% drain efficiency at average output power of 48.8 dBm, and ACPR better than -52 dBc during concurrent transmission of signals with 395 MHz instantaneous signal bandwidth (ISBW). The results represent the highest linearized efficiency reported for concurrent 3GPP Band 3 and Band 66 multiband scenarios for high power infrastructure PA applications.