Watt-Level Ka-Band Integrated Doherty Power Amplifiers: Technologies and Power Combination Strategies Invited Paper
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Department of Electronics and Telecommunications, Politecnico di Torino, 10129 Torino, Italy
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Microwave Engineering Center for Space Applications (MECSA), 00133 Rome, Italy
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editors: Hirokazu Kobayashi, Pingyi Fan and Andrea Randazzo
Electronics 2022, 11(1), 84; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11010084
Received: 23 November 2021
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Revised: 17 December 2021
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Accepted: 21 December 2021
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Published: 28 December 2021
(This article belongs to the Special Issue 10th Anniversary of Electronics: Advances in Microwave and Wireless Communications)
This paper discusses some of the design choices underlying the development of watt-level integrated Doherty power amplifiers in the K and Ka band, focusing on compound semiconductor technologies. The key aspect of on-chip power combination is discussed, presenting and comparing some of the possible alternatives. Then, the impact on the achievable bandwidth and performance of different parameters is quantified, adopting an approximate analysis, which focuses on the Doherty output combiner and allows estimating the non-linear performance of the amplifier thanks to some simplifying assumptions, without requiring a full, non-linear model of the active devices. Two sample GaAs and GaN technologies are compared first, considering parameters that are representative of the currently available commercial processes, and then several power combination strategies are analyzed, adopting the GaN technology, which is currently the only one that allows achieving the power levels required by the applications directly on chip. Finally, some hints as to the impact of the output parasitic effects of the transistors on the presented analysis are given.
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MDPI and ACS Style
Piacibello, A.; Camarchia, V. Watt-Level Ka-Band Integrated Doherty Power Amplifiers: Technologies and Power Combination Strategies Invited Paper. Electronics 2022, 11, 84. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11010084
AMA Style
Piacibello A, Camarchia V. Watt-Level Ka-Band Integrated Doherty Power Amplifiers: Technologies and Power Combination Strategies Invited Paper. Electronics. 2022; 11(1):84. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11010084
Chicago/Turabian StylePiacibello, Anna, and Vittorio Camarchia. 2022. "Watt-Level Ka-Band Integrated Doherty Power Amplifiers: Technologies and Power Combination Strategies Invited Paper" Electronics 11, no. 1: 84. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11010084
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