Efficiency Degradation in Wideband Power Amplifiers

Abstract

This paper addresses the efficiency degradation observed in wideband power amplifiers. It starts by presenting a detailed explanation that relates this observed performance degradation with the terminations at baseband. Then, a comparison between two implemented power amplifiers with the same fundamental and harmonic terminations, but with different baseband networks is presented, showing that an optimized bias network design can improve the observed efficiency degradation.