Miniature Design Technique of Stabilized C-Band p-HEMT MMIC Doherty Power Amplifier with Lumped Element Load Modulator

A broadband miniature GaAs p-HEMT MMIC Doherty power amplifier (DPA) with a series connected load operating at the C band has been developed. To minimize the circuit size, a lumped-element load modulation circuit without a quarter wavelength transmission line has been introduced to MMIC technology. For both an input and output power divider/combiner circuit, two baluns are used to reduce the length of the phase adjuster circuit without causing instability. An inherent DPA instability problem related with the degenerated sub-harmonic frequency has been analyzed with the S and T parameters of DPA circuit components, resulting in a novel stabilized circuit. The developed stabilized DPA delivered a maximum power added efficiency (PAE) of 49% and a maximum output power of 23.4dBm. Greater than 40% PAE below a 10-dB input back-off from a saturated output power is obtained for a frequency range of 6.1 to 6.8GHz.