A Highly Efficient Broadband Class-E Power Amplifier with Nonlinear Shunt Capacitance

A new approach to designing a broadband and highly efficient class-E power amplifier based on nonlinear shunt capacitance analysis is proposed. The nonlinear shunt capacitance method accurately extracts optimum class-E power amplifier parameters, including an external shunt capacitance and an output impedance, at different frequencies. The dependence of the former parameter on the frequency is considered to select an optimal value of external shunt capacitor. Then, upon determining the latter parameter, an output matching network is optimized to obtain the highest efficiency across the bandwidth of interest. An analytical approach is presented to design the broadband class-E power amplifier of a MOSFET transistor. The proposed method is experimentally verified by a 140–170 MHz class-E power amplifier design with maximum added power efficiency of 82% and output power of 34 dBm.