Design of a wideband symmetric large back-off range Doherty power amplifier based on impedance and phase hybrid optimization

The present paper proposes an optimization design method for the Doherty output matching network (OMN) using impedance-phase hybrid objective function constraints, which possesses the capability of enhancing the efficiency consistency of the Doherty power amplifier (DPA) using integrated enhancing reactance (IER) during the back-off power (BOP) range. By calculating the desired reactance for an extended BOP range and combining it with the two-impedance matching method, the S-parameters of the OMN are obtained. Meanwhile, the impedance and phase constraints of the OMN are proposed to narrow the distribution range of the IER. Furthermore, a fragmenttype structure is employed in the OMN optimization so as to enhance the flexibility of the circuit optimization design. To validate the proposed method, a 1.7-2.5 GHz symmetric DPA with a large BOP range was designed and fabricated. Measurement results demonstrate that across the entire operating frequency band, the saturated output power is >44 dBm, and the efficiency ranges from 45% to 55% at a 9-dB BOP.