3.5GHz 10-Watt Power Amplifier for WiMax Application

This paper presents the design and performance of a 10-watt 3.5 GHz power amplifier MMIC implemented in a plastic air cavity QFN 8times6 mm
²
package. This amplifier product is targeting for WiMax application 3.5 GHz band. The package is mounted onto a RO4003 test board, containing only decoupling capacitors in bias networks. The packaged amplifier MMIC demonstrates gain, as high as 17 dB at 3.5 GHz, under very stable conditions, and less than 2.5% error vector magnitude (EVM) at 30 dBm average output power for OFDM signal with PAR=10 dB. The EVM and efficiency (PAE) remain below 2.5% and over 10%, respectively, in a frequency range of 3.4-3.6 GHz