High Power and High Efficiency Unbalanced Doherty Amplifier used to Extend the Output Power Back-off

This paper presents a high power and high efficiency unbalanced Doherty power amplifier used to extend the output power back-off (OPBO). The proposed unbalanced amplifier uses the same type of transistors in both the main amplifier and the peaking amplifier, similar to a conventional symmetric Doherty amplifier. The unbalanced amplifier can have the impedance of a transformer located at the output of the main amplifier modified. This enables the OPBO to exceed 6 dB, the maximum OPBO for a conventional symmetric Doherty amplifier. The efficiency and linearity performance of the unbalanced Doherty amplifier are almost same as those found for the asymmetric Doherty amplifier, even though the unbalanced Doherty amplifier structure is simpler than the asymmetric Doherty structure. In order to verify the proposed amplifier performance, a 46 W Doherty amplifier has been both simulated and measured using a CDMA2000 1FA signal. From the measured results, the proposed unbalanced Doherty amplifier achieved an added power efficiency of 38 % and an adjacent channel power ratio of -34 dBc at a 885 kHz offset frequency and -35.6 dBc at a 1.98 MHz offset frequency.