A highly efficient Doherty feedforward linear power amplifier for W-CDMA base-station applications

Abstract

This paper presents a RF high-power Doherty amplifier for improving the efficiency of a 30-W feedforward linear amplifier used in wide-band code-division multiple-access (W-CDMA) base-station applications. A high-power Doherty amplifier using a single push-pull LDMOS field-effect transistor is proposed as the main amplifier of a feedforward linear amplifier. The peaking amplifier's compensation line and gate bias effects are analyzed at the 6-dB backoff point. From the experimental results of a forward-link one-carrier W-CDMA, a 2.2% power-added efficiency improvement at an adjacent channel leakage power ratio linearity of -60 dBc is achieved in comparison to a conventional feedforward class-AB amplifier.