Combined RF and multilevel PWM switch mode power amplifier

Abstract

This paper presents a novel power amplifier (PA) architecture based on the combination of radio frequency pulse width modulation (RFPWM) and multilevel PWM. The architecture provides better dynamic range at high carrier frequency compared to RFPWM. The benefits of this architecture over multilevel PWM are that it only requires a single PA and no combiner. The average efficiency for an 802.11g baseband signal is better than multilevel PWM. Our results also shows that the proposed technique exhibit a constant dynamic range at carrier frequency of 3, 4 and 5 GHz, in contrast to RFPWM which shows a decrease in dynamic range for increase in carrier frequency.