High Efficiency Wideband Envelope Tracking Power Amplifier For Next Generation Wireless Communications

The latest generation of smart devices deployed in cellular networks has created explosive growth in network data traffic, and the increasing demand for broadband services with higher data rates, require higher peak to average power ratio (PAPR) with wider bandwidth. One of the challenges in the conventional power amplifiers (PAs) with fixed supply voltage, is the degraded efficiency and generated heats at a large back-off to meet tight linearity requirements. This dissertation presents high efficiency wideband envelope tracking power amplifiers for 2.1 GHz micro base-stations and 2.5 GHz wireless mobile applications. By superimposing the envelope signal at the drain such that the RF amplifier operates consistently closer to saturation, the overall efficiency is improved and the generated heat is reduced dramatically. In the first part of the dissertation, a high performance BiCMOS DMOS monolithic envelope amplifier for micro-base station power amplifiers is presented. Due to the low breakdown voltage of the CMOS transistors, the high voltage envelope amplifier has been implemented with discrete components with high voltage process. Compared to these discrete solutions, an integrated circuits implementation for the envelope amplifier brings many benefits. The design of monolithic envelope amplifiers for high voltage (VDD = 15 V) envelope tracking applications, and the design techniques to solve the reliability issues with thin gate oxide is described. The overall envelope tracking system employing a GaN-HEMT RF transistor, and fully integrated high voltage envelope amplifier with a 0.35[mu]m BiCMOS DMOS process, is demonstrated. In the second part, a high-efficiency wideband envelope tracking power amplifier for mobile LTE applications will be presented. The CMOS envelope amplifier with hybrid linear and switcher is designed in a 150 nm CMOS process. The envelope amplifier employs direct sensing of the linear stage current to reduce the propagation delay in the switcher. The strategy is demonstrated to improve the efficiency of the complete envelope tracking power amplifier system. The resulting performance of envelope tracking system employing a GaAs HBT-based RF PA with a 5 MHz LTE signal input demonstrated state-of-the-art efficiency while meet the linearity requirement.