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In this article, a method for design automation high-efficiency power amplifiers (PAs) based on an optimization-oriented is proposed. The advantages of using particle swarm optimization to design PAs in electronic design automatic tools are analyzed, and then, simulated annealing is combined to form simulated annealing particle swarm optimization (SA-PSO). In this article, the perfectly inelastic collision used in conventional PSO is replaced by the perfectly elastic collision to improve the searching ability through reducing kinetic energy consumption. A stepped fitness function is defined to avoid the performance pit at a single-frequency point, and the concept “missing and returning” is introduced to solve the nonconvergence problem in simulation. Based on the improved SA-PSO algorithm, a broadband 10 W and a triband 6-W PA are designed. The broadband 10-W PA achieves an average drain efficiency (DE) of 62.5% and an output power of 41.2 dBm in the 0.8–3-GHz frequency band, respectively; the triband 6-W PA achieves an average of 57.4%/47.9%/47.3% DE and 37.7-/38.3-/37.4 dBm output power in 3.35–3.55-/5.75–5.95-/7.65–7.95-GHz frequency bands, respectively, while the gains of most stopbands reach less than 0 dB. With digital predistortion technology, the adjacent channel power ratio (ACPR) can reach less than −45 dBc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, an extended Chebyshev function is proposed to adapt the matching condition of the power amplifier (PA) by introducing a new factor. A set of impedance functions can be directly calculated along with the variation of a new variable, and the first element extracted from the functions is distributed in a wide range. In addition, the impedance function whose first element is the closest to the output capacitance of the transistor can be easily read out and selected as the original matching network. The fundamental impedance of the selected function will be reached a good matching state, and the impedances out of band will be on the edge of Smith chart. To achieve better performances, the real frequency technique is applied to adjust the harmonic impedances preventing it from falling into the low-efficiency region. Two PAs with a relative bandwidth of 34% and 75% are implemented to validate the proposed approach. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents a modified Doherty configuration with extended bandwidth. The narrow band feature of the conventional Doherty amplifier is discussed in the view of the broadband matching. To extend the bandwidth, the post-matching architecture is employed in the proposed design. Meanwhile, broadband low-order impedance inverters are adopted to replace the quarter-wavelength transmission lines. Low-pass filter topologies are used to realize both the post matching network and the impedance inverters. A modified Doherty Power amplifier was designed and fabricated based on commercial GaN HEMT devices to validate the broadband characteristics of this configuration. The 6-dB backoff efficiencies of 47%–57% are obtained from 1.7 to 2.6 GHz (41.9% fractional bandwidth) and the measured maximum output power ranges from 44.9 to 46.3 dBm in the designed band. In particular, more than 40% efficiencies are measured at 10-dB backoff throughout the operation band. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]