Load Mismatch Compensation of Load-Modulated Power Amplifiers: A Comprehensive Review

Abstract

With the diversification, acceleration, and arraying of wireless communication systems, power amplifiers (PAs) face stricter demands in terms of RF operation bandwidth, high-efficiency power range, and load mismatch compensation. After years of development, load-modulated PAs (LMPAs) can maintain high efficiency over a wide bandwidth and a larger output back-off (OBO) range. However, there is obvious performance degradation when the load impedance of the current LMPAs is mismatched. To ensure the perfect application of power amplifiers in wireless communication systems, load mismatch compensation methods should be developed for LMPAs. Therefore, this paper gives a comprehensive review on the load mismatch compensation techniques of LMPAs, including the Doherty power amplifier and load-modulated balanced amplifier.

Keywords

• power amplifier
• load mismatch
• load modulation
• high efficiency