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IEEE MICROWAVE AND WIRELESS COMPONENTS LETTERS
Extended Continuous Inverse Class-F Power
Amplifiers With Class-AB Bias Conditions
Yezi Dong, Luhong Mao, Member, IEEE, and Sheng Xie
Abstract— In this letter, the operation of continuous inverse
Class-F (Class-F−1 ) mode with Class-AB bias conditions is mod-
eled. The extended waveform expression of intrinsic drain current
is derived for continuous Class-F−1 power amplifiers (PAs) biased
above pinchoff point. Based on the modified current and voltage
waveform formulas, the delivered power and efficiency perfor-
mance is analyzed as a function of conduction angle. Moreover,
the design space of fundamental and harmonic load admittances
is generalized for any conduction angle between π and 2π.
For experimental verification, a broadband PA is implemented
with a 6-W LDMOS device. Under a Class-AB bias condition,
the fabricated PA exhibits more than 70% power added efficiency
and 38-dBm output power with a fractional bandwidth of 62%
from 500 to 950 MHz.
Index Terms— Broadband, class-AB bias, continuous inverse
Class-F (Class-F−1 ), power amplifier (PA).
I. I NTRODUCTION
I N ORDER to meet the growing demand of high date
rate in the future wireless communication systems, broad-
band high-efficiency power amplifiers (PAs) have become the
critical components in wireless transmitters. The continuous
concept was presented in [1] and [2], and the continuous
harmonic-tuned PA (Class-F/F−1 ) has been proved to be a
good solution to extend the bandwidth while maintaining high
efficiency [3]–[7]. The basic theory of continuous Class-F and
Class-F−1 operation is derived with Class-B bias condition.
The generalized derivation and the design guideline for con-
tinuous Class-F PAs under Class-AB bias conditions have been
researched in [3], but the bias-depended continuous Class-F−1
PAs have not been discussed yet. Different from continuous
Class-F operations, the effects of both the harmonic-tuned
waveform shaping [2] and conduction angle act on drain
current, which leads to different restrictive conditions and
design considerations.
In this letter, the expression of intrinsic current waveforms
for continuous Class-F−1 PA is extended to support any
conduction angle ranging from π (Class-B condition) to
2π (Class-A condition). Based on the derivation, the relation-
ship between PA performance and conduction angle is revealed
Manuscript received December 20, 2016; accepted February 2, 2017.
This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation
of China under Grant 61372011 and in part by the Guangxi Key Labora-
tory of Precision Navigation Technology and Application, Guilin University
of Electronic Technology under Grant DH201513. (Corresponding author:
Luhong Mao.)
The authors are with the School of Electronic Information Engineering,
Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072, China (e-mail: lhmao@tju.edu.cn).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LMWC.2017.2678433
1531-1309 © 2017 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
1
and the design approach is proposed to guide the design of
continuous Class-F−1 PAs with Class-AB bias conditions.
In addition, for low-cost design consideration, a low-cost
Laterally Diffused Metal Oxide Semiconductor (LDMOS)
device is used in this letter for experimental verification.
II. C ONTINUOUS I NVERSE C LASS -F O PERATION W ITH
C LASS -AB B IAS C ONDITIONS
A. Analysis of Voltage and Current Waveforms
The voltage waveform of continuous Class-F−1 operation is
the same as standard Class-F−1 , which is a half-wave rectified
sinusoidal waveform and can be expressed as
√
Vd (θ ) = VDC − (VDC − VK )( 2 cos θ − 0.5 cos 2θ ) (1)
where Vdc is the dc supply voltage and VK is the knee voltage.
The standard continuous Class-F−1 operation is realized
by multiplying a reactive term to the current waveform of
standard Class-F−1 mode [2] and the expression is given by
I d (θ ) = i dF−1 (θ )(1 − β sin θ )
= (IDC + I1 cos θ + I3 cos 3θ)(1 − β sin θ) (2)
where i dF−1 (θ ) is the standard Class-F−1 term and β ∈ [−1, 1]
is the continuous mode parameter, and the Class-F−1 operation
is obtained for β = 0. Expanded i dF−1 (θ ) to third order with
Fourier series, the current waveform can be expressed with the
dc (Idc ), fundamental (I1 ), and third-harmonic (I3 ) component
coefficients of standard Class-F−1 mode. Considering the
effect of conduction angle α, i dF−1 (θ ) can be expressed as [8]
i dF−1 (θ )
⎧
⎨ Im cos θ − cos(α/2) − i r2 cos 2θ ; − α ≤ θ ≤ α
⎪
= 1 − cos(α/2) 2 2 (3)
⎪ α α
⎩0; −π ≤ θ < − , < θ ≤ π .
2 2
The term i r2 cos 2θ is introduced to meet the requirement of
infinite second-harmonic impedance in Class-F−1 operation.
Different from Class-F, Im in (3) is not the peak current of
the device (IMAX ). The relationship between the maximum
value of Id (θ ) and Im depends on the value of α and β.
For certain operation condition, the limitation of Im can be
calculated with IMAX .
Since the current waveform of Class-F−1 should not contain
the second-harmonic component, the coefficient i r2 is obtained
through the boundary condition of

1 α/2
i −1 (θ ) · cos 2θdθ = 0 (4)
π −α/2 dF
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2 IEEE MICROWAVE AND WIRELESS COMPONENTS LETTERS

Fig. 1. Normalized drain current and voltage waveform for different α and β. Fig. 2. Normalized delivered power and theoretical efficiency as a function
of conduction angle α.

and i r2 can be expressed as

2Im (sin α + 2 sin(α/2))
i r2 = . (5)
3(α + sin α cos α)
By using Fourier expansion of (3), the standard Class-F−1
coefficients in (2) can be computed as
 
1 Im (2 sin(α/2) − α cos(α/2))
IDC = − i r2 sin α (6)
2π (1 − cos(α/2))


1 3Im (α − sin α) α 3α
I1 = − 2i r2 3 sin + sin (7)
6π 1 − cos(α/2) 2 2

Fig. 3. Photograph of the implemented PA.
1 Im α 3α
I3 = 2 sin α + sin + sin
π 6 2 2

 harmonic (Y2L ), and third harmonic (Y3L ) at current generator
i r2 α 5α
− 5 sin + sin . (8) plane can be derived as
5 2 2
−I1 + jβ IDC
A set of voltage and current waveforms can be obtained Y1L = √ (11)
according to the expressions earlier. Fig. 1 shows the nor- 2 (VDC − V K )
I1 − I3
malized voltage and current waveforms where VK is ignored Y2L = jβ (12)
and the current waveforms are normalized with Im . It can be VDC − VK
observing that the maximum value of drain current increases Y3L = ∞. (13)
as α and |β| increase, while Im is constant. In the design of the extended continuous Class-F−1 PAs,
Using the fundamental and dc current and voltage expres- the conduction angle α is compromised between output power
sions, the fundamental delivered power and efficiency can be and DE according to Fig. 2. Once α is determined, the maxi-
calculated as mum i dF−1 (θ ) depends on Im and |β|. Since |β| is varied across
√
2 the frequency band, the limitation of Im is different at different
Pdel = I1 (VDC − VK ) (9)
2 frequencies. Under the maximum condition of |β|, Im is calcu-
Pdel lated according to IMAX . At the rest frequencies, the same Im
η= . (10)
IDC VDC value can be used to maintain the same output power across
The normalized delivered power and the theoretical efficiency the band, or higher Im can be chosen to achieve higher output
are shown in Fig. 2 as a function of conduction angle α. The power. With the determined α, β, and Im , the design space of
maximum output power is obtained at about α = 290°. The load harmonic impedances can be estimated using (11)–(13).
theoretical drain efficiency (DE) is greater 80% for conduction
angle less than 270°. III. PA I MPLEMENTATION AND E XPERIMENTAL R ESULT
It is noted that Im can be extracted as a common factor A broadband PA, which operates from 500 to 950 MHz,
in the expression of Idc and I1 . Therefore, the expression of is implemented with a 6-W LDMOS transistor (NXP
η contains no Im term and the efficiency is uncorrelated to Im . AFT27S006N). The designed PA is fabricated with
The design of Im only concerns about output power and the Rogers 4003C (ε = 3.38 and H = 0.508 mm) substrate,
limitation of IMAX . as shown in Fig. 3. The supply and bias voltage of the
transistor is 28 and 1.9 V, respectively, where the quiescent
B. Design Approach for the Extended Continuous bias current is about 80 mA and the conduction angle is
Class-F−1 PA about 200°. According to the calculated design space at current
Using the modified current waveform expression, the generator plane and simulated harmonic load-pull result at
optimum load admittances of fundamental (Y1L ), second package plane, the output matching network is designed.
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DONG et al.: EXTENDED CONTINUOUS INVERSE CLASS-F PA
Fig. 4. Measured output power, gain, and DE as a function of input power.
Fig. 5. Measured output power, gain, and DE as a function of frequency at
input power of 25 dBm.
Fig. 6. (a) Screen shot of measured ACLR at output power of 33dBm.
(b) Measured ACLR and efficiency at output power of 33 dBm and 30 dBm.
The PA is measured by keysight N5172B signal generator
and Rohde and Schwarz FSL18 spectrum analyzer. The con-
tinuous wave performances as a function of input power and
frequency are shown in Figs. 4 and 5, respectively. It can be
seen that the PA achieves the DE of 73%–79% and power
added efficiency (PAE) greater than 70% with a fractional
bandwidth of 62% from 500 to 950 MHz. The output power
of the PA obtains 38–40 dBm and the power gain is greater
than 13 dB at an input power of 25 dBm.
The adjacent channel leakage ratio (ACLR) is tested with
a 5-MHz Wideband Code Division Multiple Access signal at
an output power of 33 and 30 dBm, respectively. As shown
in Fig. 6, the measured ACLR achieves −35 to −43 dBc with
an average DE of 32%–41% at an output power of 33 dBm.
3
TABLE I
P ERFORMANCE C OMPARISON W ITH H IGH -E FFICIENCY
C ONTINUOUS M ODE PAS
Table I summarizes some recent works in the area of high-
efficiency continuous PA design. The LDMOS device is gener-
ally considered to be less efficient than GaN device and is not
suitable for broadband applications [9], however, the designed
LDMOS PA exhibits good efficiency and bandwidth perfor-
mance similar to the GaN PAs in Table I. Moreover, compared
with the GaN PA, the cost of LDMOS PA is much lower.
IV. C ONCLUSION
The extended theory of continuous Class-F−1 operation with
Class-AB bias conditions has been proposed in this letter.
Through the derivation of current waveforms, the relation-
ship between PA performance and conduction angle α was
revealed, which guides the selection of bias point. The design
space of fundamental and harmonic impedance was revised as
a function of conduction angle. For experimental validation,
a Class-AB biased continuous Class-F−1 PA was implemented
using a 6-W LDMOS device. The measurement result demon-
strated a good performance in efficiency and bandwidth.
In addition, the low-cost LDMOS device shows a good poten-
tial in implementation of broadband high-efficiency PAs.
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