Propagation effects of power supply fluctuation in wireless power amplifiers

Abstract

In this paper, the effect of power supply fluctuations on the output of wireless power amplifier has been estimated. Because of the high trans-conductance of power amplifiers, deviations in power supplies may cause serious performance degradation on the output power of the amplifier. Therefore, by approximating the propagation theory of uncertainties and by simulating the effect of the fluctuation in the drain and gate voltages, the sensitivities on the output power was calculated. Then, the combined fluctuation in the output power as well as the contribution from each fluctuation sources are estimated with respect to the deviation of DC gate and drain biases. Therefore, the analysis on an amplifier of 31 dBm output power was performed with 10 % fluctuations in DC biases, and the combined overall fluctuation in the output power was estimated to have about 3.39 % deviation from the nominal value. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.