The design and realization of high‐efficiency power amplifier with drain efficiency over 80% at 3.5 GHz

This article presents the full design methodology and implementation of inverse Class-F power amplifier with a commercial high-power GaN HEMT. For a 3.48 GHz continuous wave signal, the measurement results show state-of-the-art power-added-efficiency (PAE) of 76.7%, drain efficiency of 81.1%, gain of 12.9 dB, and output power of 39.9 dBm. Within a bandwidth of 200 MHz, drain efficiency and output power are maintained above 60% and 38.5 dBm, respectively. With digital predistortion, it achieves −45 dBc of adjacent channel leakage ratio for a 2.5 MHz wideband signal with a peak-to-average power ratio of 8.9 dB, with an average PAE of 36.7%. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 54:521–525, 2012; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com. DOI 10.1002/mop.26577