Design and implementation of a high-efficiency concurrent dual-band power amplifier

This paper studies the behaviors of power amplifier (PA) driven by a single-carrier continuous wave (CW) signal and a two-carrier CW signal both in theory and simulation, and explains why the traditional dual-band PA failed to perform satisfactory results when a two-carrier CW signal is applied to, called concurrently. Besides that, an evaluation standard of concurrent dual-band PA was presented to value its performance. Solution was given with design and fabrication of a concurrent 1.85 GHz/2.65 GHz class F PA, employing a 10W GaN HEMT device from Cree, CGH40010, whose measurement shows the saturated output power is 40.6 dBm and 40.8dBm with drain efficiencies (DE) of 77.4% and 75.3% at 1.85 GHz and 2.65 GHz, respectively. On the other hand, we see that the peak DE achieves 59.7% with an output power of 39.9 dBm in concurrent mode, which follows up with the standard.