A Simple and Universal Measurement Method for the Efficiency of Pulsed RF Power Amplifiers

This paper presents a simple and universal measurement method for the average efficiency and instantaneous efficiency of pulsed RF power amplifiers. The average efficiency of the traditional definition varies with different duties and thus lacks universality, because of the DC power consumption outside the RF pulse. In our proposed method, the DC power consumption within a pulse period is divided into different parts. The parameters of each part can be extracted-from simple measurements of the average voltage and current under different duties. The average efficiency and instantaneous efficiency of different duties can be calculated with the extracted parameters. Since current clamps or oscilloscopes are not necessary to measure the instantaneous voltage and current, this solution can be easily implemented in a simple and cost-effective way, to expand the application into compact and sealed circuits. Measurement uncertainties under different duties were analyzed of the method. Experimental results of the proposed method are consistent with theoretical efficiencies, which help validate the method.