A 2-stage 150W 2.2GHz dual path LDMOS RF power amplifier for high efficiency applications

This paper presents a dual path 150W Silicon LDMOS 2-stage RF power amplifier designed for WCDMA at 2.2GHz. This device is capable of handling 2 times the UMTS band with flat RF performance. Under a 1 tone CW stimulus, this power amplifier delivers 150W with a power added efficiency of 47% and 29dB linear gain. A 2-stage compact Doherty amplifier constructed of an “in-package” 2 × 75W architecture is also presented, showing the versatility of this unique design. Using the device in a dual-path configuration, this Doherty circuit delivers an increase in drain efficiency of 9–12 points at 8 dB output backoff from P3dB compression, compared to a circuit using the device in a 150W, class-AB reference design.