Wideband design of the fully integrated transmitter front-end with high power-added efficiency

A novel approach to enhance power-added efficiency (PAE) bandwidth and transmitting power bandwidth of the fully integrated transmitter front-end is proposed. To obtain these characteristics, a wideband multifunctional antenna operating as an output matching load of the power transistor and harmonic tuning circuits, as well as a radiator, is designed and fully integrated with a power transistor. Therefore, the wideband direct integration between the output of the power transistor and input of the antenna can be achieved without any impedance transformers. Under the condition of PAE over 50% and transmitting power within 3 dB for the peak transmitting power at the operating band, the measured PAE bandwidth and transmitting power bandwidth are 930 MHz (from 4.9 to 5.83 GHz) and 1030 MHz (from 4.8 to 5.83 GHz), respectively. About a half size is also obtained compared with the conventional wideband class F active antenna for high PAE, and the second and third harmonic radiations of the proposed structure for the normalized peak power of the fundamental frequency are measured less than -30 and -40 dB in all directions, respectively.