2017 International Conference on Circuits, Devices and Systems

Concurrent High-Efficiency Tri-band GaN Power Amplifier with Continuous Class-

E Mode

Peng Chen1, Yuhua Pan2, Kai Yang1

1
School of Aeronautics and Astronautics
University of Electronic Science and Technology of China
Chengdu, China
2
School of Automation Engineering
University of Electronic Science and Technology of China
Chengdu, China
e-mail: chenp@uestc.edu.cn, kyang@uestc.edu.cn, yh_pan@qq.com

Abstract—This paper presents a concurrent high-efficiency tri- A concurrent tri-band high-efficient power amplifier with
band power amplifier with the continuous class-E mode. The continuous class-E mode is proposed in this paper.
continuous class-E power amplifier can perform high-efficient Compared with other reported tri-band power amplifiers, the
concurrently at some operational frequencies by manipulating input and output matching network of the proposed power
the fundamental and second harmonic impedances of the amplifier are all microstrip transmission lines and it does not
transistor. After selected the design parameters of the require RF-MEMS switches to select the frequency bands
proposed tri-band power amplifier, the output and input manually. Also, the output and input matching networks with
microstrip lines matching network are directly optimizing by microstrip lines can be optimized by the mixed particle
the mixed particle swarm optimization-genetic algorithm,
swarm optimization-genetic algorithm, which has faster
which can accelerate the convergence speed of the matching
convergence speed than the standard particle swarm
networks comparing with the standard particle swarm
optimization algorithm. To verify the proposed design optimization algorithm.
methodology, a tri-band power amplifier at 1.7 GHz, 2.6 GHz
and 3.0 GHz is designed. The measured results show that the
fabricated power amplifier delivers more than 40 dBm output
power with 62%, 64% and 64% PAE at 1.7 GHz, 2.6 GHz and
3.0 GHz, respectively.

Keywords-continuous class-E; drain efficiency; high-

efficiency; power amplifier; tri-band

I. INTRODUCTION
Multiband/multimode wireless communication systems
can transmit and receive several signals concurrently, which
tremendously raise the channel capacity. Multiband power
amplifiers [1]-[3] are substantial components to archive the
multiband/multimode wireless communication systems and
they have already been well studied. However, most of these
works focus on the dual-band power amplifier. Only a few
are related with the tri-band power amplifier.
During these tri-band power amplifiers, some researchers
employ the radio-frequency micro electromechanical
systems (RF-MEMS) switch to realize the tri-band matching
network but it cannot deliver three signals concurrently [3].
Another tri-band power amplifier can transfer three different
signals concurrently using resonators in both input and
output matching networks [4]. However, the application of
lumped capacitors and inductors reduces its design flexibility
in RF/microwave ranges. The tri-band power amplifier with
negative-resistance active notch using SiGe BiCMOS
process is also studied [5]. But its design method is difficult
to migrate to the base-station power amplifier design.
Figure 1. The schematic of the proposed continuous class-E power
amplifier.
II. DESIGN METHOD
The classical class-E power amplifier is very famous for
its high-efficient performance and simple structure. However,
its efficiency will decrease when the working frequency
deviates from the central frequency as the existence of the
drain-to-source capacitor, which is very sensitive to the
performance of the class-E power amplifier. To overcome
this drawback, the class-E power amplifier with reactive
second harmonic impedances, which is also termed as
continuous class-E power amplifier, is introduced by Ozen
and Jos [6]. The continuous class-E power amplifier can be
high-efficient at continuum frequencies by properly
manipulating the fundamental and second harmonic
impedances and is a promising candidate for broadband and
multiband power amplifier design. It has one design freedom:

978-1-5386-1871-4/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE 

the phase shift between the output voltage and DC voltage,
. The designer can adjust the performance of the
concerned frequencies by this parameter.
Since there are three frequencies are concerned, should
be carefully selected as it related with the whole performance
at the three frequencies. There are two criteria to select :
The first is to make the calculated fundamental and second
harmonic impedances are close to each other to reduces the
matching networks’ complexity; the second is to reduce the
switch current jump during the on-to-off switching instant
[8]. According to the two criteria, the phase shift is
selected as 65° . And since this parameter is determined, the
fundamental impedance can be calculated as:
§ 7 2S sin(2I1 )  3S 2  32 ·
Zf ¨  ¸˜ R
©3 12S cos 2 (I1 ) ¹
where is the output load resistor. And the second harmonic
impedance is
Z2 j 3S
S sec2 (I1 ) ˜ R
j [4sin(2 tan 1 (2 cot(I1 ))) (2)
24(S  2 tan(I1 ))
 j 2(cos(2 tan 1 (2 cot(I1 )))  2) tan(I1 )]
It is noteworthy that the required fundamental and second
harmonic impedances are not the impedances at transistor’s
package plane but the impedances at transistor’s current-
generated plane. The commercial gallium nitride (GaN)
transistor CGH40010 from Cree Inc. is used in this paper. It
consists of the Cree CGH40015D bare die chip and Cree
440166 package. The typical equivalent-circuit model of this
transistor with bare die chip and output parasitic parameters
is estimated as Fig. 2, which is given in [7].
Figure 2. Equivalent-circuit model of CGH40010F with bare die chip and
output parasitic parameters.
After the fundamental and second harmonic impedances
at the current-generated plane are calculated by substituting
=65° into (1) and (2), respectively, the impedances at the
package plane are available by transferring the impedances at
the current-generated plane. The directly optimization of the
matching network will be carried out using the impedances
at the package plane.
The structure of the output matching network should be
set before the directly optimization of the matching network.
There are three factors to be considered: (1) The first
microstrip line next to the transistor should be a series
microstrip line to weld the drain of the transistor. (2) The
second microstrip line next to the first microstrip line should
be shorted to the ground to make it as a part of the power
supply line. (3) In order to reduce the circuit size, the
numbers of the microstrip lines numbers should be carefully
considered. After balancing the circuit size and optimization
convenience, seven microstrip lines are adapted in this paper
although there are only six impedances to be controlled. The
whole circuit structure is shown in Fig. 3.
(1)
Figure 3. Output matching network for proposed tri-band power amplifier
with seven microstrip lines.
The transducer gain , which is defined as the ratio of
the output power and the input power , is employed to
evaluate how prefect the matching network is
PL
TG 1 U 2 (3)
Pavs
where ρ is defined as
Z1  ZS * Z 2  ZL*
U (4)
Z1  ZS Z 2  ZL
And and are illustrated in Fig. 3. is defined in
the range [0, 1]. The more increases towards to 1, the
better the matching network is. The matching network
optimization can be accomplished by a single-objective
optimization function
­ min f 6 | TGZi  TG0 |
° (5)
® s.t.10  Z k  50
° 200  T  1500
¯ k
where is the optimization objective which is set as 0.8,
is the transducer gain at frequency ωi , is the
characteristic impedance of microstrip lines , and is the
electrical length of microstrip lines , respectively.
The input matching network is also finished by optimizing
the optimal fundamental and second harmonic impedances,
which are obtained by source-pull simulation after the output
matching network is designed. The structure of the input
matching network is shown in Fig. 4.


Figure 4. Input matching network for proposed tri-band power amplifier.
In order to make the curve of the fundamental and second
harmonic impedances over the whole concerned bandwidth
more smoothly approach to the desired impedances, the
particle swarm optimization (PSO) is used.
The PSO algorithm is a famous artificial intelligence
algorithm for its quick convergence and simple realization
[9]. It imitates the process of a group of birds searching food
in preset area. The single bird have two properties: the
position and the velocity . After giving each bird initial
values of positions and velocities, the birds change their
position and velocity according to equation (6).
­vidk 1 Zvidk  c1[ ( pidk  xidk )  c2K ( pgd
k
 xidk )
® (6)
¯ xidk 1 xidk  rvidk 1
where superscript + 1 and stand for the iteration times;
and are the particle velocity and position,
respectively; and are the particle itself and the global
best position, respectively; ξ and η are random function, ω,
, and are empirical parameters.
(a)
(b)
Figure 5. Optimization with standard PSO algorithm (a) Output matching
network; (b) Input matching network.

After getting the positions and velocities of all the birds,
the pre-defined fitness function ( , ) is used to evaluate
the optimization: if the fitness function is less than the pre-
set value, the optimization finishes; otherwise the
optimization changes the positions and velocities again and
evaluate again until the fitness function less than the pre-set
value.
The optimization results of the output and input matching
network with the standard PSO algorithm are shown in Fig.
5(a) and Fig. 5(b), respectively. In order to make the result
more reliable, each matching network has been optimized 5
times. The input matching network optimization converges
after 100 times iterations. However, most of the output
matching network optimization does not converges even
though 300 times iterations. It seems that the standard PSO
meets the premature problem.
In order to solve this problem, the mixed algorithm is
used in this paper. The genetic algorithm (GA), which is
famous for its high precision search and low opportunity of
trapping local minimum values [12], mixed with the PSO
algorithm is proofed to be a useful method [10], [11].
There are two improvements of the traditional mixed
PSO- GA algorithm. For one thing, the direct decimal system
rather than the binary system is used in this paper, which can
tremendously reduce the process of the algorithm realization.
During the selection process, the particles with smaller
fitness values directly go into the next iteration while the
particles with larger fitness values, which is about 1/3 of the
total particles, go through the crossover and mutation
processes. The strategy of the crossover is list as follow.
­ xki 1 D xkj  (1  D ) ˜ xki
® j (7)
¯ xk 1 D xk  (1  D ) ˜ xk
i j
where α is an empirical parameter.
For another, the two-dimensional hyper-chaos sequence
is used to initialize the initial values of the position and
velocity particles:
­ xin 1 0.95vin  1.1xin vin
® n 1 (8)
¯vi 0.55  1.55 xin  1.8vin
The output and input matching network optimization
results of the mixed PSO-GA algorithm is shown in Fig. 6(a)
and 6(b), respectively. The output and input matching
network optimization both have a faster convergent speed,
which means that the mixed PSO-GA algorithm works in the
optimization process. Furthermore, the output matching
network has better converge situation and most experiments
converges.
 (a)
(b)
Figure 6. Optimization with mixed PSO-GA algorithm (a) Output matching
network; (b) Input matching network.
III. RESULTS
The fabricated concurrent tri-band power amplifier is
illustrated in Fig. 7. The final circuit was implemented on a
Rogers 5880 substrate with thickness of 0.508 mm and
relative dielectric constant of 2.20. The active device is
biased at = 28 V and = 100 mA.
Figure 7. Fabricated concurrent tri-band class-E power amplifier.
Fig. 8 demonstrates a simulated switch voltage and current
waveforms at current-generated plane at 2.6 GHz, which are
similar of those at 1.7 GHz and 3.0 GHz.

Figure 8. Simulated switch voltage and current waveform at current-
generated plane at 2.6 GHz.
Fig. 9 shows the measured gain, output power and PAE
varying with frequency of the proposed concurrent tri-band
power amplifier. It is evident that three peaks performances
are around the three designed frequency bands. All the three
bands PAE are more than 62% with 11 dB gain and 40 dBm
output power at saturated situation.
Figure 9. Measured gain, output power and PAE varying with frequency of
the proposed tri-band power amplifier.
Table I summaries the state-of-the-art performances of the
tri-band power amplifier for base stations.
TABLE I. PERFORMANCE COMPARISON OF THE TRI-BAND POWER
AMPLIFIERS
IV. CONCLUSION
A concurrent tri-band power amplifier with continuous
class-E mode is proposed in this paper. After calculating the
fundamental and second harmonic impedances at the
package plane of the transistor, the direct optimizations of
the output and input matching networks are applied by the
mixed PSO-GA algorithm, which can accelerate the
convergence speed of the matching networks comparing with
the standard particle swarm optimization algorithm. The
concurrent tri-band power amplifier with the proposed
method is designed and fabricated. The measured results
show that it delivers more than 40 dBm output power with
62%, 64% and 64% PAE at 1.7 GHz, 2.6 GHz and 3.0 GHz,
respectively.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This work was supported by the National Natural Science
Foundation of China 61601088 and 61571093 and the
Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities
ZYGX2015KYQD088.
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