Highly Efficient 1.8-GHz Amplifier With 120-MHz Class-G Supply Modulation

A broadband and highly efficient class-G supply modulated power amplifier (PA) system with 120-MHz instantaneous modulation bandwidth operating in the 1.8-GHz band is presented in this paper. The core element is the fast class-G supply modulator which switches the supply voltage of the RF PA between three discrete levels with a minimum pulse duration of 2.5 ns. Two designs for the drain bias interface between PA and modulator are evaluated where the best results are achieved for an implementation based on a λ/4-wavelength RF-choke. Measurement results are presented for a 120-MHz contiguous carrier aggregated signal using eleven subcarriers with modulation bandwidths ranging from 5 to 20 MHz for each subcarrier. In combination with digital predistortion, the system achieves 38.5% PAE with -40-dB EVM and -46-dB ACLR for the 120-MHz multicarrier signal with a peak-to-average power ratio of 10 dB at the PA output and 39-dBm average output power. The total efficiency enhancement achieved by the class-G modulation is 13% points.