Analysis and Design of High Efficiency Feedforward Amplifier Using Distributed Element Negative Group Delay Circuit

We will demonstrate a novel topology for the feedforward amplifier. This amplifier does not use a delay element thus providing an efficiency enhancement and a size reduction by employing a distributed element negative group delay circuit. The insertion loss of the delay element in the conventional feedforward amplifier seriously degrades the efficiency. Usually, a high power co-axial cable or a delay line filter is utilized for a low loss, but the insertion loss, cost and size of the delay element still acts as a bottleneck. The proposed negative group delay circuit removes the necessity of the delay element required for a broadband signal suppression loop. With the fabricated 2-stage distributed element negative group delay circuit with -9 ns of total group delay, a 0.2 dB of insertion loss, and a 30 MHz of bandwidth for a wideband code division multiple access downlink band, the feedforward amplifier with the proposed topology experimentally achieved a 19.4 % power added efficiency and a -53.2 dBc adjacent channel leakage ratio with a 44 dBm average output power.