High Efficiency, Highly Linear, Solid-State Power Amplifier for Wide Band Applications

The Power Amplifier is a crucial element of any RF link as it generates the necessary power to the antenna to allow reliable communications, radar pulses or jamming capabilities. In order to efficiently generate this high power, power amplifiers are usually operated at, or close to the amplifier saturation point to be more efficient (less DC power to obtain the RF output). However, this is where the amplifier begins to exhibit non-linear performance, creating higher levels of harmonic and intermodulation distortion. This is a particular concern in multi-carrier and complex modulated systems. Distortions are caused both in amplitude and phase and can cause spectral regrowth which can cause jammers to interfere with friendly combined communications in bands outside the band being jammed. Trident proposes to use GaN technology to achieve wide bandwidths and good thermal performance in a small space with a linearizer to help achieve the linearity goals. The design will be optimized to operate the amplifier around the +2 dB compression point to achieve sufficient efficiency to ensure required performance. Based on the analysis completed under Phase I, Trident proposes to break the frequency range into three different bands (20"500, 500"2500, and 2500"6000 MHz).