VNA Based Measurements and Nonlinear Modeling for Efficient RF Circuit Design

Abstract

All the players in RF industry are looking to develop high efficiency circuits, and are willing to invest heavily to achieve this target. Increasing power efficiency enables decreasing power consumption, thus reducing the use of the resources provided from the battery, to reduce the size of cooling systems, improve reliability, and ultimately reduce the electricity bill. For advanced design of RF power amplifier circuits, this requires a detailed knowledge of the optimal matching conditions that can leverage the best performances. If the RF designer can use an accurate transistor model for the simulation with a proper design method, then the design target will be hit. If there is no model available, alternative methods must be found in order to retain the best RF design. In the later case, for die or packaged transistor, two approaches are proposed. Both tend to secure the design flow of high efficiency amplifier when a complete compact transistor nonlinear model is not available.