IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS—II: EXPRESS BRIEFS, VOL. 65, NO.
12, DECEMBER 2018
A High-Efficiency Ultra-Broadband Mixed-Mode
GaN HEMT Power Amplifier
R. Krishnamoorthy , N. Kumar, Senior Member, IEEE, A. Grebennikov, Senior Member, IEEE,
and H. Ramiah , Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—In this brief, a new technique of efficiency enhance-
ment of ultra-broadband RF power amplifier with simple load
network approach is introduced, in which a combination of the
reactance compensation and third-harmonic tuning is developed
with design equations. The fabricated prototype board of the
mixed mode power amplifier demonstrated 10 W output power
over a wide frequency band of 0.4–2.0 GHz with an efficiency
greater than 62% and observes good agreement between simu-
lation and measured output. This implementation is suitable for
two-way radio product applications.
Index Terms—RF power amplifier, reactance compensation,
GaN HEMT, lumped elements, efficiency.
I. I NTRODUCTION
IGH-EFFICIENCY ultra-broadband power amplifiers
H are usually designed using GaN HEMT technology with
different loading techniques. Depending on the frequency
bandwidths and implementation capabilities, Class-E, Class-C,
or Class-F mode is based upon a finite number of harmon-
ics that can be used to achieve high efficiency in the power
amplifier operation [1]. A high-efficiency broadband Class-E
technique can be applied if a sufficiently small value of the
loaded quality factor QL of the load network is provided [2]. In
this case, an output power of about 42 dBm with a power gain
of more than 10 dB can be achieved with the drain efficiency
over 72% across the frequency bandwidth from 1.7 GHz to
2.7 GHz [3]. By integrating a six-order low-pass output match-
ing circuit in a GaN HEMT Class-E power amplifier where the
series inductors are replaced by the short-length transmission
lines and the shunt capacitors are replaced by the open-circuit
stubs, a drain efficiency of 63-89% with an output power of
40-43 dBm and a power gain of 10-13 dB was measured in
a frequency bandwidth of 0.9 GHz to 2.2 GHz with optimized
dc supply voltages [4].
Manuscript received July 4, 2017; revised September 19, 2017,
November 29, 2017, and January 20, 2018; accepted February 5, 2018. Date
of publication February 27, 2018; date of current version November 23, 2018.
This work was supported in part by CREST, Malaysia; in part by
Motorola Solutions under Grant PV007-2015; in part by funding from
PV006-2016 for technical support. This brief was recommended by Associate
Editor J. Goes. (Corresponding author: R. Krishnamoorthy.)
R. Krishnamoorthy, N. Kumar, and H. Ramiah are with the Electrical
Engineering Department, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur 50603,
Malaysia (e-mail: ragavan.krish@siswa.um.edu.my; narendra.k@um.edu.my).
A. Grebennikov is with the Research Laboratory, Sumitomo Electric Europe
Ltd., Hertfordshire WD6 3SL, U.K. (e-mail: grandrei@ieee.org).
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/TCSII.2018.2809491
1549-7747 c 2018 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.
Authorized licensed use limited to: National Chiao Tung Univ.. Downloaded on July 20,2021 at 03:04:38 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
1929
Lower drain voltage peak factors can be obtained by using
the inverse Class-F or Class-F multisection transmission-line
load networks. In the operation of Class-F−1 mode, with
second harmonic impedance manipulation, a PAE of more
than 75% can be achieved across frequency bandwidth of
500-900 MHz [5]. By using a 10-W CREE GaN HEMT
device, a drain efficiency of greater than 70% was measured
over the frequency bandwidth of 1.45 to 2.45 GHz with an
output power of 40.4-42.2 dBm [6]. Adapting the same GaN
HEMT device, the drain efficiencies of 60-80% with an output
power of 40-43 dBm was achieved in the frequency band-
width of 1.7 to 2.8 GHz [7]. In combining Class-F and inverse
Class-F modes with optimized dc supply voltages, a wide
frequency range from 1.3 to 3.3 GHz was encapsulated achiev-
ing a drain efficiency of 60-84% with an output power of
40-40.4 dBm [8].
In optimizing third harmonic termination under active sec-
ond harmonic, a PAE higher than 80% is achieved across
960-1020 MHz [9]. A Class E power amplifier design can
achieve efficiency more than 60% across 160-320 MHz, with
reactance compensation technique [10]. By merely optimizing
the fundamental-frequency and second-harmonic impedances
across the frequency bandwidth from 525 to 1325 MHz,
a drain efficiency over 70% at an output power over 39 dBm
were achieved [11]. Much broader frequency bandwidths can
be achieved with resistive harmonic loading and lossy input
matching. For example, a broadband lossy matched GaN
HEMT MMIC power amplifier achieves a drain efficiency of
44.9-63.6% at an output power of 39.5-41.3 dBm over the
frequency bandwidth of 0.5-2.5 GHz [12]. A bandwidth of
0.4-4.1 GHz with a drain efficiency of 40-62% was achieved
by a GaN HEMT power amplifier with a simplified broad-
band load network delivering an output power greater than
40 dBm [13].
In this brief, an ultra-broadband 10-W GaN HEMT power
amplifier is described having a lossy input matching circuit and
a simple lumped load network based on a combination of the
reactance compensation technique and third-harmonic tuning
to cover a half-decade frequency bandwidth of 0.4-2.0 GHz
with high operating efficiency.
II. R EACTANCE C OMPENSATION
From the theoretical considerations, it was found out in
mid-1960s that the bandwidth response of a parametric ampli-
fier can be improved using multiple-resonant bandpass filters
1930 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS—II: EXPRESS BRIEFS, VOL. 65, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2018
Fig. 1. Reactance compensation network with lumped elements.
Fig. 2. Real and imaginary parts of the input impedance characteristics over
a wide frequency band, when Qs = 0.25 at 1 GHz.
for the signal and idling circuits rather than utilizing simple
resonant circuits [14], [15]. At the same time, it was analyti-
cally calculated that the added resonant circuits should have an
appropriate QL -factor to optimally reduce the rate of change
in reactance of both the signal and idling circuits [16].
To describe reactance compensation circuit technique, con-
sider the simplified equivalent load networks with a shunt
resonant Lp Cp circuit followed by a series resonant Ls Cs
circuit, as shown in Fig. 1. In this case, both resonant cir-
cuits are tuned to the fundamental frequency ω0 and R is
the load resistance. The reactance of a resonant circuit varies
with frequency. It increases in a series resonant circuit and
decreases in a loaded parallel resonant circuit in the vicinity
of the resonant frequency. As a result, at near resonant, the
positive slope of reactance in the series circuit is compensated
with a proportional negative slope of reactance in a shunt con-
figuration. By diligently choosing the components in the shunt
circuit, the rate of change in the reactance with frequency
can be made exactly opposite to that of the series circuit,
thus producing a nullified variation over a wide frequency
bandwidth.
Authorized licensed use limited to: National Chiao Tung Univ.. Downloaded on July 20,2021 at 03:04:38 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
Fig. 3. Real and imaginary parts of the input impedance characteristics over
a wide frequency band, when Qs = 0.15 at 1 GHz.
Fig. 4. Broadband matching network with third-harmonic trap.
The frequency bandwidth with zero susceptance Bnet =
Im(Y net ) will be maximized if, at a resonant frequency ω0 ,

dBnet (ω) 
=0 (1)
dω ω=ω0
resulting in
1 2Ls
Cp + − = 0. (2)
ω02 Lp R2
From (2) it follows that the loaded quality factor of the
shunt circuit Qp = ωCp R is equal to the loaded quality factor
of the series compensating circuit Qs = ωLs /R.
Figure 2 shows the expected frequency behavior of the real
and imaginary components of the load-network impedance
with a reactance compensation of Qp = Qs = 0.25 at midband
frequency of 1 GHz (R = 50 and Cp = 0.8 pF). The compo-
nent Re(Znet ) shown in Fig. 2 (a) is almost constant with ±2%
variation within an octave frequency band, range from 0.7 to
1.4 GHz, whereas the Im(Z net ) component shown in Fig. 2 (b)
is flat across 0.6-1.6 GHz. However, Qp = Qs = 0.25 is not
an optimum value. A more constant performance for Re(Z net )
can achieved with optimized Qs = 0.15, as shown in Fig. 3(a).
KRISHNAMOORTHY et al.: HIGH-EFFICIENCY ULTRA-BROADBAND MIXED-MODE GaN HEMT POWER AMPLIFIER
Fig. 5. Simulated circuit schematic of broadband mixed-mode GaN HEMT power amplifier.
In this case, smaller variation of the output power can be
achieved over a wide frequency band, and higher efficiency
can be achieved using a mixed-mode operation when inductive
and capacitive reactances can be present at different bandwidth
frequencies. In this case, the load-network reactance changes
from the inductive reactance at 0.5 GHz to the capacitive
reactance at 2.5 GHz, as shown in Fig. 3 (b).
Figure 4 shows the reactance compensation load network
with a low-pass matching section which includes the third-
harmonic resonant circuit to approximate Class-F mode of
operation at a higher bandwidth of frequency in increasing effi-
ciency (in this case, the third harmonic of lower frequencies is
not tuned). The third-harmonic resonant circuit Lm3 Cm3 pro-
vides a capacitive reactance at the fundamental frequency that
results in an open-circuit condition at the output. This is due
to parallel resonant circuit formed by the shunt capacitor Cp
and the equivalent inductor consists of the shunt inductor Lp
and the series Ls Cs Lm components.
The reactive component of the input impedance Im(Znet )
should be set to infinite to approximate Class-F mode opera-
tion at center bandwidth frequency of:
1 1
ω0 =  =√
Lp Cp Ls Cs
where the third-harmonic resonant circuit Lm3 Cm3 is tuned to
zero at high frequency ωh , thus resulting in
Lp + Lm + 89 Ls
ωh Cp −   = 0.
ωh Lp Lm + 89 Ls
For the simplified case of equal quality factors when QL =
R/ωLp = ωLs /R = ωLm /R, from Eq. (4) it follows that
QL ∼
= 0.25
the low value of QL allows the high efficiency operation
over a wide frequency band. The quality factor of 0.25 in
Eq. (5) corresponds to the theoretical value for reactance com-
pensation circuit for maximally flat reactance as depicted in
Eq. (1).
Authorized licensed use limited to: National Chiao Tung Univ.. Downloaded on July 20,2021 at 03:04:38 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
1931
III. B ROADBAND H IGH -E FFICIENCY
P OWER A MPLIFIER D ESIGN
The circuit schematic of a high-efficiency ultra-broadband
GaN HEMT power amplifier is shown in Fig. 5, integrating
a 10 W Cree device CGH40010F with an output shunt capaci-
tance of 1.3 pF at V dd = 28 V. The input lossy matching circuit
includes a series RC circuit, as well as a 3:1 voltage ferrite-
based transformer and a shunt RL circuit to provide broadband
input matching with minimum input insertion loss. By using
the input matching network shown in Fig. 5 (including a 1 nF
capacitor in series with the parallel combination of a 5 Ohm
resistor and a 10 pF capacitor), stability is improved at low
frequencies (because of the presence of resistor) and power
gain is improved at high frequencies (resistor is bypassed).
Increasing the power gain at high frequencies compensates
for the lower device gain and improves gain flatness. In this
case, the series resonant circuit is tuned to 1.0 GHz, whereas
the third-harmonic circuit is optimized to 6.5 GHz (referring
to higher fundamental frequency).
Fig. 6 demonstrates the drain voltage waveforms at three
frequencies of 0.4 GHz, 1.4 GHz, and 2.1 GHz with volt-
age peak factors less than 2.5, corresponding to mixed-mode
(3) operation conditions approximating the asymmetric Class-E
voltage waveform as shown in Fig. 6 (a) and symmetric
rectangular Class-F voltage waveforms shown in Fig. 6 (c),
respectively.
(4)
IV. E XPERIMENTAL P ROTOTYPE
AND M EASURED R ESULTS
A prototype board of the design has been developed inte-
grating CREE’s CGH40010 GaN HEMT to experimentally
verify the proposed broadband power amplifier design method.
(5) The board has been fabricated using two-layer Rogers PCB
platform, with dielectric constant of 3.66 and substrate thick-
ness of 0.762 mm. The photograph of the prototype board for
wideband power amplifier design is shown in Fig. 7. The board
consists RF input and output ports, two voltage supply feeds
for drain voltage and gate voltage, input and output matching
networks, consuming an overall size of 120 × 122 mm2 .
1932 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS—II: EXPRESS BRIEFS, VOL. 65, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2018
Fig. 6. Drain voltage waveforms at (a) 0.4 GHz, (b) 1.4 GHz and (c) 2.1 GHz.
However, the effective size area relevant to the power ampli-
fier is much smaller, with an area of 55 × 60 mm2 . The test
board is mounted on heatsink using six screws, to provide
solid hold between PCB and heatsink. This accommodates
good heat dissipation. Several chip capacitors (10 pF, 39 pF
and 470 pF) are used to bypass dc gate biasing to ground.
The dc-feed lines for the power amplifier consist of high-Q
air-wound coil inductor.
The drain supply voltage is 28 V and the quiescent current
is set in the range of 40-90 mA. A bias voltage of −2.4 V
has been applied to the gate of the power amplifier. The
board has been designed with well isolated open grounding
area, and sufficient via-holes. DC and RF signals are carefully
routed so that their coupling is minimized. The width of the
dc routing to the drain of the transistor is carefully selected
to ensure optimum dc current carrying capacity during oper-
ation. For better grounding and to ensure the performance
of the power amplifier design, the via-holes are well dis-
tributed, with dedicated grounding via-holes for all shunt
components.
The simulated and measured PAE and gain performance
of the prototype board is shown in Fig. 8. The measurement
Authorized licensed use limited to: National Chiao Tung Univ.. Downloaded on July 20,2021 at 03:04:38 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
Fig. 7. Full prototype of broadband power amplifier board with effective
size area corresponding to power amplifier only (highlighted in yellow color).
Fig. 8. Simulated vs. measured power-added efficiency and power gain.
results obtained without any additional tuning or optimization
of prototype board indicates high efficiency over the wide
frequency band. In the simulation stage, actual passive compo-
nent models, transmission line lossy behavior and other layout
considerations are incorporated. The overall drain efficiency is
60% and greater. The measured power gain of the designed
prototype board agrees well with simulated results, ranging
from 10 to 12 dB for the desired bandwidth. Fig. 9 shows that
the prototype design is capable to achieve an output power of
about 40 dBm from 0.3–2.1 GHz with a DC current around
600 mA. The simulation and measurement results are in good
agreement (with less than 10% error) within 300 – 2100 MHz.
Due to the PCB substrate effects and the limited modeling
accuracy of the components, the error between the simulated
and measured data is more than 10% at frequencies higher
than 2.1 GHz.
A comparison Table I shows the performance summary of
various state-of-art broadband power amplifiers implemented
with GaN HEMT technology as discussed in Section I. In this
brief, high efficiency greater than 62% was achieved across
wide frequency bandwidth of 0.4-2.0 GHz with reasonable
high-gain operation of 11 dB, which is a significant achieve-
ment using a simple approach, suitable for two way radio
product implementations.
KRISHNAMOORTHY et al.: HIGH-EFFICIENCY ULTRA-BROADBAND MIXED-MODE GaN HEMT POWER AMPLIFIER
TABLE I
P ERFORMANCE S UMMARY OF B ROADBAND H IGH -E FFICIENCY P OWER A MPLIFIERS
Fig. 9. Simulated vs. measured output power and dc current.
V. C ONCLUSION
A mixed mode ultra-broadband power amplifier design
method is presented with simple approach. The theoretical
design equations were developed to enable a designer to
replicate the amplifier in the need of a highlighted specifi-
cations. This approach is suitable for the industrial need in
low cost implementation. The experimental result shows high
efficiency achievement throughout a wide bandwidth between
0.4-2.0 GHz. To the best of the author’s knowledge this
brief demonstrates superior efficiency for wideband frequency
operation.
R EFERENCES
[1] F. H. Raab, “Class-E, class-C, and class-F power amplifiers based on
a finite number of harmonics,” IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Techn.,
vol. 49, no. 8, pp. 1462–1468, Aug. 2001.
[2] N. Kumar, C. Prakash, A. Grebennikov, and A. Mediano, “High-
efficiency broadband parallel-circuit class E RF power amplifier with
reactance-compensation technique,” IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Techn.,
vol. 56, no. 3, pp. 604–612, Mar. 2008.
[3] A. Grebennikov, N. O. Sokal, and M. J. Franco, Switchmode RF and
Microwave Power Amplifies. Oxford, U.K.: Academic Press, 2012.
Authorized licensed use limited to: National Chiao Tung Univ.. Downloaded on July 20,2021 at 03:04:38 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
1933
[4] K. Chen and D. Peroulis, “Design of highly efficient broadband
class-E power amplifier using synthesized low-pass matching networks,”
IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Techn., vol. 59, no. 12, pp. 3162–3173,
Dec. 2011.
[5] T. Sharma, R. Darraji, and F. M. Ghannouchi, “A methodology for
implementation of high-efficiency broadband power amplifiers with
second-harmonic manipulation,” IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. II, Exp.
Briefs, vol. 63, no. 1, pp. 54–58, Jan. 2016.
[6] N. Tuffy, L. Guan, A. Zhu, and T. J. Brazil, “A simplified broadband
design methodology for linearized high-efficiency continuous class-F
power amplifiers,” IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Techn., vol. 60, no. 6,
pp. 1952–1963, Jun. 2012.
[7] Y. Sun, X.-W. Zhu, J. Zhai, L. Zhang, and F. Meng, “Highly effi-
cient concurrent power amplifier with controllable modes,” IEEE Trans.
Microw. Theory Techn., vol. 63, no. 12, pp. 4051–4060, Dec. 2015.
[8] K. Chen and D. Peroulis, “Design of broadband highly efficient
harmonic-tuned power amplifier using in-band continuous class-F−1 /F
mode transferring,” IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Techn., vol. 60, no. 12,
pp. 4107–4116, Dec. 2012.
[9] M. Seo et al., “High-efficiency power amplifier using an active second-
harmonic injection technique under optimized third-harmonic termi-
nation,” IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. II, Exp. Briefs, vol. 61, no. 8,
pp. 549–553, Aug. 2014.
[10] R. A. Beltran, “Broadband class-E power amplifier designed by lumped-
element network transforms and GaN FETs,” in IEEE MTT-S Int.
Microw. Symp. Dig., Phoenix, AZ, USA, 2015, pp. 1–4.
[11] Z. Lu, W. Chen, and F. M. Ghannouchi, “High-efficient harmonic-
tuned power amplifier with more than an octave bandwidth,” in Proc.
14th IEEE Wireless Microw. Technol. Conf., Orlando, FL, USA, 2013,
pp. 1–3.
[12] K. Krishnamurthy, D. Green, R. Vetury, M. Poulton, and J. Martin,
“0.5-2.5 GHz, 10W MMIC power amplifier in GaN HEMT technol-
ogy,” in Compound Semicond. Integr. Circuit Symp. Dig., Greensboro,
NC, USA, 2009, pp. 1–4.
[13] C. M. Andersson, J. Moon, C. Fager, B. Kim, and N. Rorsman, “Decade
bandwidth high efficiency GaN HEMT power amplifier designed with
resistive harmonic loading,” in IEEE MTT-S Int. Microw. Symp. Dig.,
Montreal, QC, Canada, 2012, pp. 1–3.
[14] G. L. Matthaei, “A study of the optimum design of wide-band paramet-
ric amplifiers and up-converters,” IRE Trans. Microw. Theory Techn.,
vol. MTT-9, no. 1, pp. 23–38, Jan. 1961.
[15] J. T. DeJaeger, “Maximum bandwidth performance of non-degenerate
parametric amplifier with single-tuned idler circuit,” IEEE Trans.
Microw. Theory Techn., vol. MTT-12, no. 4, pp. 459–467, Jul. 1964.
[16] B. L. Humphreys, “Characteristics of broadband parametric ampli-
fiers using filter networks,” Proc. IEE, vol. 111, no. 2, pp. 264–274,
Feb. 1964.