Gallium Nitride (GaN) technology is capable of very high power levels but suffers from high non-linearity. With the advent of 5G technologies, high linearity is in greater demand due to complex modulation schemes and crowded RF (Radio Frequency) spectrum. Because of the non-linearity issue, GaN power amplifiers have to be operated at back-off input power levels. Operating at back-off reduces the efficiency of the power amplifier along-with the output power. This research presents a technique to linearize GaN amplifiers. The linearity can be improved by splitting a large device into multiple smaller devices and biasing them individually. This leads to the cancellation of the IMD3 (Third-order Intermodulation Distortion) components at the output of the FETs and hence higher linearity performance. This technique has been demonstrated in Silicon technology but has not been previously implemented in GaN. This research work presents for the first time the implementation of this technique in GaN Technology. By the application of this technique, improvement in IMD3 of 4 dBc has been shown for a 0.8-1.0 GHz PA (Power Amplifier), and 9.5 dBm in OIP3 (Third-order Intercept Point) for an S-Band GaN LNA, with linearity FOM (IP3/DC power) reaching up to 20. Large-signal simulation and analysis have been done to demonstrate linearity improvement for two parallel and four parallel FETs. A simulation methodology has been discussed in detail using commercial CAD software. A power sampler element is used to compute the IMD3 currents coming out of various FETs due to various bias currents. Simulation results show by biasing one device in Class AB and others in deep Class AB, IMD3 components of parallel FETs can be made out of phase of each other, leading to cancellation and improvement in linearity. Improvement up to 20 dBc in IMD3 has been reported through large-signal simulation when four parallel FETs with optimum bias were used. This technique has also been demonstrated in simulation for an X-Band MMIC PA from 8-10 GHz in GaN technology. Improvements up to 25-30 dBc were shown using the technique of biasing one device with Class AB and other with deep class AB/class B. The proposed amplifier achieves broadband linearization over the entire frequency compared to state-of-the-art PA's. The linearization technique demonstrated is simple, straight forward, and low cost to implement. No additional circuitry is needed. This technique finds its application in high dynamic range RF amplifier circuits for communications and sensing applications. / Doctor of Philosophy / Power amplifiers (PAs) and Low Noise Amplifiers (LNAs) form the front end of the Radio Frequency (RF) transceiver systems. With the advent of complex modulation schemes, it is becoming imperative to improve their linearity. Through this dissertation, we propose a technique for improving the linearity of amplifier circuits used for communication systems. Meanwhile, Gallium Nitride (GaN) is becoming a technology of choice for high-power amplifier circuits due to its higher power handling capability and higher breakdown voltage compared with Gallium Arsenide (GaAs), Silicon Germanium (SiGe) and Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (CMOS) technologies. A circuit design technique of using multiple parallel GaN FETs is presented. In this technique, the multiple parallel FETs have independently controllable gate voltages. Compared to a large single FET, using multiple FETs and biasing them individually helps to improve the linearity through the cancellation of nonlinear distortion components. Experimental results show the highest linearity improvement compared with the other state-of-the-art linearization schemes. The technique demonstrated is the first time implementation in GaN technology. The technique is a simple and cost-effective solution for improving the linearity of the amplifier circuits. Applications include base station amplifiers, mobile handsets, radars, satellite communication, etc.

abstract: As wireless communication enters smartphone era, more complicated communication technologies are being used to transmit higher data rate. Power amplifier (PA) has to work in back-off region, while this inevitably reduces battery life for cellphones. Various techniques have been reported to increase PA efficiency, such as envelope elimination and restoration (EER) and envelope tracking (ET). However, state of the art ET supply modulators failed to address high efficiency, high slew rate, and accurate tracking concurrently. In this dissertation, a linear-switch mode hybrid ET supply modulator utilizing adaptive biasing and gain enhanced current mirror operational transconductance amplifier (OTA) with class-AB output stage in parallel with a switching regulator is presented. In comparison to a conventional OTA design with similar quiescent current consumption, proposed approach improves positive and negative slew rate from 50 V/µs to 93.4 V/µs and -87 V/µs to -152.5 V/µs respectively, dc gain from 45 dB to 67 dB while consuming same amount of quiescent current. The proposed hybrid supply modulator achieves 83% peak efficiency, power added efficiency (PAE) of 42.3% at 26.2 dBm for a 10 MHz 7.24 dB peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) LTE signal and improves PAE by 8% at 6 dB back off from 26.2 dBm power amplifier (PA) output power with respect to fixed supply. With a 10 MHz 7.24 dB PAPR QPSK LTE signal the ET PA system achieves adjacent channel leakage ratio (ACLR) of -37.7 dBc and error vector magnitude (EVM) of 4.5% at 26.2 dBm PA output power, while with a 10 MHz 8.15 dB PAPR 64QAM LTE signal the ET PA system achieves ACLR of -35.6 dBc and EVM of 6% at 26 dBm PA output power without digital pre-distortion (DPD). The proposed supply modulator core circuit occupies 1.1 mm2 die area, and is fabricated in a 0.18 µm CMOS technology. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Electrical Engineering 2017

In this thesis we introduce a two-way Doherty amplifier architecture with multiple feedbacks for digital predistortion based on impedance-inverting directional coupler (transcoupler). The tunable two-way Doherty amplifier with a tuned circulator-based impedance inverter is presented. Compact N-way Doherty architectures that subsume impedance inverter and offset line functionality into output matching networks are derived. Comprehensive N-way Doherty amplifier design and analysis techniques based on load-pull characterization of active devices and impedance modulation effects are developed. These techniques were then applied to the design of a two-way Doherty amplifier and a three-way Doherty amplifier which were manufactured and their performance measured and compared to the amplifier performance specifications and simulated results.

Advanced achievements in the area of RF circuit design led to a significant increase in availability of wireless communications in everyday life. However, the rapid growth in utilizing the RF equipment has brought several challenges in different aspects of RF circuit design. This has been motivating researchers to introduce solution to cope with these challenges and further improve the performance of the RF circuits. In this dissertation, we focus on the improvements in three aspects of the circuit design. High temperature and temperature compensated transmitter design, ultra-low phase noise signal generators, and compact and low complexity polar transmitter design. Increase in the ambient temperature can impact the performance of the entire communication system. However, the RF hardware is main part of the system that is under the impact of the temperature variations in which it can change the characteristics of the individual building blocks of the RF chain. Moreover, transistors are the main elements in the circuit whose performance variation must be consider when the design target is compensating the temperature effects. The influence of the temperature variation is studied on the transistors and the building blocks in order to find the most effective approaches to compensate these variations and stabilize the performance of the RF chain at temperatures up to 220 C. A temperature sensor is designed to sense these variations and adjust the characteristics of the circuit components (e.g. bias voltages), accordingly. Further, a new variable gain phase shifter (VGPS) architecture is introduced toward minimizing the temperature impact on its performance in a phased-array transmitter architecture. Finally, a power amplifier as the last stage in a transmitter chain is designed and the variation in its performance with temperature is compensated through the VGPS stage. The transmitter is prototyped to evaluate its performance in practice. Another contribution of this dissertation is to introduce a novel voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) structure to reduce the phase noise level below state-of-the-art. The noise to phase noise mechanism in the introduced doubly tuned oscillator is studied using linear time-variant (LTV) theory to identify the dominant noise sources and either eliminate or suppress these noise sources by introducing effective mechanism such as impedance scaling. The designed VCO is fabricated and measurement results are carried out that justified the accuracy of the analyses and effectiveness of the introduced design approach. Lastly, we introduce a compact and simple polar transmitter architecture. This type of transmitters was firstly proposed to overcome the serious shortcomings in the IQ transmitters, such as IQ imbalance and carrier leakage. However, there is still several challenges in their design. We introduce a transmitter architecture that operates based on charge to phase translation mechanism in the oscillator. This leads to significantly reduction in the design complexity, die area, and power dissipation. Further, it eliminates a number of serious issues in the design such as sampling rate of the DACs. comprehensive post-layout simulations were also performed to evaluate its performance. / Doctor of Philosophy / To keep up with the ever-growing demand for exchanging information through a radio frequency (RF) wireless network, the specification of the communication hardware (i.e. transmitter and receiver) must be improved as the bottleneck of the system. This has been motivating engineers to introduce new and efficient approaches toward this goal. In this dissertation however, we study three aspects of the circuit design. First, variation in the ambient temperature can significantly degrade the performance of the communication system. Therefore, we study these variations on the performance of the transmitter at high temperature (i.e. above 200 C). Then, the temperature compensation approaches are introduced to minimize the impact of the temperature changes. The effectiveness of the introduced techniques are validated through measurements of the prototyped transmitter. Second, signal generators (i.e. oscillators) are the inseparable blocks of the transmitters. Phase noise is one of the most important specifications of the oscillators that can directly be translated to the quality and data rate of the communication. A new oscillator structure targeting ultra-low phase noise is introduced in the second part of this dissertation. The designed oscillator is fabricated and measured to evaluate its performance. Finally, a new polar transmitter architecture for low power applications is introduced. The transmitter offers design simplicity and compact size compared to other polar transmitter architectures while high performance.

Yes / This paper presents an approach to implement an automatically tuning antenna for optimising power transfer suitable for software defined radio (SDR). Automatic tuning is accomplished using a closed loop impedance tuning network comprising of an impedance sensor and control unit. The sensor provides the control unit with data on the transmit or receive power, and the algorithm is used to impedance of a T-network of LC components to optimize the antenna impedance to maximise power transmission or reception. The effectiveness of the proposed tuning algorithm in relation to impedance matching and convergence on the optimum matching network goal is shown to be superior compared with the conventional tuning algorithm. / This work is partially supported by innovation programme under grant agreement H2020-MSCA-ITN-2016 SECRET-722424 and the financial support from the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) under grant EP/E022936/1

The research presented in this thesis leverages silicon-germanium (SiGe) heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) technology to develop microwave front-end electronics for active phased-array antennas. The highly integrated electronics will reduce costs and improve the feasibility of snow measurements from airborne and space-borne platforms. Chapter 1 presents the motivation of this research, focusing on the technological needs of snow measurement missions. The fundamentals and benefits of SiGe HBTs and phased-array antennas for these missions are discussed as well. Chapter 2 discusses SiGe power amplifier design considerations for radar systems. Basic power amplifier design concepts, power limitations in SiGe HBTs, and techniques for increasing the output power of SiGe HBT PAs are reviewed. Chapter 3 presents the design and characterization of a robust medium power X-band SiGe power amplifier for integration into a SiGe transmit/receive module. The PA design process applies the concepts presented in Chapter 2. A detailed investigation into measurement-to-simulation discrepancies is outlined as well. Chapter 4 discusses the development and characterization of a single-chip X-band SiGe T/R module for integration into a very thin, lightweight active phased array antenna panel. The system-on-package antenna combines the high performance and integration potential of SiGe technologies with advanced substrates and packaging techniques to develop a high performance scalable antenna panel using relatively low-cost materials and silicon-based electronics. The antenna panel presented in this chapter will enable airborne SCLP measurements and advance the technology towards an eventual space-based SCLP measurement instrument that will satisfy a critical Earth science need. Finally, Chapter 5 provides concluding remarks and discusses future research directions.

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