A 78% High Power Added Efficiency Ultra-Wideband Class-E GaN HEMT Power Amplifier for Far-Field Wireless Power Beaming Applications

This paper presents the design of a single-stage class-E power amplifier(PA) that is capable of generating a high power-added efficiency(PAE) and bandwidth performance using a GaN-HEMT transistor. The proposed PA design has been implemented on a class-E topology that involves integrating a finite DC feed inductance together with an output parallel circuit configuration to generate optimal switching drain voltage and current waveforms, thus allowing the PA to achieve a peak PAE performance of 78.6% at 26 dBm input power at a frequency of 6 GHz. In addition, the class-E output network components are integrated with microstrip T-line elements, and reoptimization of the lumped components of the load network along with the widths of the T-line elements allow the PA to achieve a wide −3dB
$S_{21}$
gain bandwidth performance of 1.89 GHz. EM simulation results show that the proposed class-E PA design can generate an output power of 35.9 dBm(4 W) and achieve a gain of 10.9 dB at the
$P_{1dB}$
point of 25 dBm input power. By utilizing a hybrid integration of finite DC-feed and parallel circuit configurations, along with the combination of microstrip T-line elements, the PA can achieve greater than 70% PAE performance over a wide bandwidth of 1 GHz from 5.5–6.5 GHz.