Power amplifier with back-off efficiency

• US 8,432,224 B1
• Filed: 09/29/2010
• Issued: 04/30/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 09/29/2009
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Qorvo International Pte. Ltd. (Qorvo, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Amalfi Semiconductor, Inc. (Qorvo, Inc.)
• Inventors: Woo, Chong, Scott, Baker, Frank, Stephen, Cao, Dongmei, Maxim, George A.
• Primary Examiner(s): Nguyen, Khanh V
• Application Number:
  US12/893,653
• Time in Patent Office: 944 Days
• Field of Search: 330/278, 330/279, 330/285, 330/297, 330/310
• US Class Current: 330/285
• CPC Class Codes: H03F 1/0227 using supply converters
• CPC Class Codes: H03F 1/0238 using supply converters
• CPC Class Codes: H03F 3/195 in integrated circuits

Abstract

A power amplifier system is provided with a signal path including driver stages and output stages. A power control element has one or more control ports and uses one or more nonlinear control characteristics.

Claims

1. A non-drain bias power amplifier system, comprising:

a signal path including driver stages and output stage,

a power control element with one or more power control ports and uses one or more nonlinear control characteristics; and

a nonlinear control curve generator driven by at least one of, an input power control signal, a voltage or current saturation sensing signal and a sensed or estimated output power signal, the non-linear control curve generator driving one or more of inputs of the output stage and the driver stages.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein the power control element uses at least one of, one or more piecewise linear characteristics having one or more inflection points, and continuous nonlinear control characteristics.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein the power control element uses at least one of, an open-loop generation of a control characteristics inflection point(s), and a closed-loop generation of the control characteristic inflection point(s).

4. The system of claim 1, wherein the power control element uses at least one of, a manual alignment of the control curve inflection points to power amplifier power control compression points, an automatic (self-alignment) of inflection points with power amplifier compression points, and a combination of manual and automatic alignment.

5. The system of claim 1, wherein the power control element uses at least one of, an intrinsic inflection point(s) generation, and an extrinsic inflection point(s) generation determined by one or more saturation detectors.

6. The system of claim 5, wherein the power control element uses at least one of, a voltage-mode saturation detector(s), a current-mode saturation detector(s), a baseband (envelope) domain saturation detector(s), and an RF domain saturation detector(s).

7. The system of claim 1, wherein the power control element uses at least one of, control characteristics with one or multiple inflection points, and multiple control characteristics having one or more inflection points.

8. The system of claim 1, wherein inflection points are generated by at least one of, adjusting bias of driver stages, adjusting a bias point of an output stage, changing a size of a driver stage, and adjusting bias voltages for main and cascode gates of an output stage.

9. The system of claim 1, wherein control curves inflection points are generated by at least one of, driver and/or output stage bias voltages, driver and/or output stage bias currents, driver stage size adjustments, and a combination of driver and/or output stage bias voltages and currents.

10. The system of claim 1, wherein the power control element uses at least one of, a single port for power amplifier power control at low, moderate, and high power levels, two or more ports for power amplifier power control with at least of portion used at low, moderate and high power levels.

11. The system of claim 1, wherein a main power control technique and an auxiliary power control technique use at least one of, separate power control ports and same control ports, the separate power control ports, and same control ports are sequenced or overlapped with power amplifier compression point positions.

12. The system of claim 1, wherein the power control element uses at least one of, multiple modulation to generate output power level control (amplitude modulation and pulse-width modulation), change a class of operation of power amplifier outputs stage as power level modifies from low to intermediate and then to high.

13. The system of claim 1, wherein the power control element is used with at least one of, a feedback control, a feed-forward control, and a combination of feedback and feed-forward control.

14. The system of claim 1, wherein the power control element is used with a cascode output stage that has at least one of, low-voltage devices, high-voltage devices, and intermediary-voltage devices.

15. The system of claim 1, further comprising:

a power control block with nonlinear control characteristics with at least one of, breakdown protection blocks, snap-back protection blocks, over-voltage and over-current protection blocks, linearity enhancement blocks, and DC-DC converters that generate constant or variable supply voltages for power amplifier signal path stages.

16. A non-drain power amplifier system, comprising:

a signal path including driver stages and an output stage; and

a power control element that uses amplitude and pulse-width modulation to change a power amplifier output power level.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein the power control element uses class C operation of an output stage at low power levels, class B operation at moderate or high power levels, and class B or class AB towards peak output power levels.

18. The system of claim 16, wherein the power control element uses classes of operation for different regions of a power control range selected from at least one of, class C, class B, class AB, class EB.