Optimization Design Methodology for High Efficiency Power Amplifiers

This paper presents a novel optimization design method for high efficiency power amplifier (PA). In order to enhance the operational efficiency and streamline the design process of the PA, a sinusoidal adaptive simulated annealing particle swarm optimization is proposed to achieve comprehensive optimization of the PA's efficiency, output power, and gain, which avoids the unexpected performance degradation caused by conventional high efficiency PA designs methodologies. To validate the proposed method, four high efficiency PAs operating at 0.5, 1.5, 2.2, and 3.5 GHz were designed optimized. Furthermore, the high efficiency PA operating at 1.5 GHz was implemented and measured. The measured results show an 80% drain efficiency is achieved at saturated output power of 41 dBm.