A high gain 10 watts wideband distributed power amplifier for two way radio system

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to propose a practical design methodology of high-power wideband power amplifier.

Design/methodology/approach

The distributed power amplification method is used for a Gallium Nitride device to achieve wideband operation. To achieve the high power without trading-off the bandwidth and gain, a methodology to extract the package-loading effect is proposed and verified.

Findings

A maximum output power of 10 W is achieved from 100 MHz to 2 GHz with a wideband power gain of 32 dB in measurement. This performance is achieved through a single section matching network.

Research limitations/implications

Measurement accuracy is dependable to the thermal behaviour of the high-power device.

Practical implications

The proposed technique is an excellent solution to be used in the two way radio power amplifier that minimizes the fundamental trade-off issue between power, gain, bandwidth and efficiency.

Originality/value

In this work, a practical distributed power amplifier (DPA) design methodology is proposed that reduces the development cycle time for industrial engineers working on high-power circuit design application.

Citation

Sangaran, P., Kumar, N., Rajendran, J. and Grebennikov, A. (2018), "A high gain 10 watts wideband distributed power amplifier for two way radio system", Microelectronics International, Vol. 35 No. 1, pp. 24-32. https://doi.org/10.1108/MI-10-2016-0065