Design And Temperature Characteristics Research Of High-efficiency Parallel Class-E Power Amplifier

In recent years,with the rapid development of wireless communication,the requirement of the quality of the received signal has been increased.As an important component of the wireless communication system,the performance of RF transceivers is crucial to the whole system.To avoid the transmission loss of wireless signals in the free space and acquire 1 watt or more transmit power,the AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistors(HEMTs)are widely employed in the power amplifier(PA)block of RF transceivers.However,the impacts of the operation environment(e.g.,temperature)on RF PAs should not be ignored,since the wireless communication base stations are usually outside.In addition,a lot of heat is generated during the operation of AlGaN/GaN HEMTs,which raises the operation temperature of all the components in the RF PA blocks.Unfortunately,the increased temperature can seriously influence the gain and output power of PAs,and even make the whole circuit invalid.Therefore,temperature has become the key influence factor of the stability of RF PAs.The study on temperature characteristics and failure mechanism of PAs has importance value in the theory and practice.In this paper,the design of an AlGaN/GaN HEMT based high efficiency Class-E PA is introduced firstly,and schematic simulation and joint simulation is done in ADS software.Then the measurement of small-signal S-parameter and large-signal output power is conducted at room temperature.The result shows a good fitting between measured and simulated data,which provide a guarantee for further study on the high efficiency Class-E PAs at high temperature.Finally,to explore the change rules of the PA performance at high temperature and low temperature,the DC characteristics,small-signal S-parameter and large-signal output power of high efficiency Class-E PAs have been measured at different temperature.The measured results indicate that the temperature is one of the most critical influences on the stability of PAs.Therefore,the study on temperature characteristics and failure mechanism of PAs has practical implications,and at the same time this study can also provide a valuable reference to future research on the design of high steady and high efficiency Class-E PAs.