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A novel CMOS operational transconductance amplifier (OTA) is proposed and demonstrated in this thesis. Due to its feedforward-regulated cascode topology, it breaks the previous OTA frequency limit of several hundred MHz and operates at frequencies up to 10 GHz with a large transconductance. This is confirmed by an in-depth high-frequency analysis, simulations, and experimental demonstrations using purpose-built circuits. Experimental results also show that the proposed OTA has high linearity and low intermodulation distortion, which is of particular interest in microwave circuits. The OTA’s noise behavior and the effects of process variations, device mismatch, and power supply noise on the transconductance are also studied. To the best of our knowledge, the noise analysis here is the first of its kind on regulated cascode circuits, which can be applied to other regulated cascodes with minor changes. Three microwave applications of this OTA are explored in this thesis: 1) an active bandpass filter with a wide tuning range, 2) a 2.4-GHz ISM-band variable phase shifter, and 3) a microwave active quasi-circulator, which are all in CMOS MMIC form. These three circuits can be easily integrated with other chip components for System-on-Chip (SoC) realizations. The use of the OTA makes these three applications super compact: the active filter is at least 5 times smaller than previous circuits with a similar topology, and the phase shifter and quasi-circulator are at least 3 times smaller than previous works in that frequency range. Furthermore, the tunability of the developed OTA on its transconductance gives its applications extra freedom in tuning their frequencies and gains/losses electronically. In the first application, the active bandpass filter has a novel narrowband-filtering topology and has a wide tuning-range of 28% around 1.8 GHz, which makes it very suited for reconfigurable multi-band wireless systems. In the second and third applications, the active variable phase shifter has a comparable variable phase shift range of 120º in the 2.4-GHz ISM band and the active quasi-circulator has transmissions close to 0 dB and directivities over 24 dB from 1.5 GHz to 2.7 GHz. / Thesis (Ph.D, Electrical & Computer Engineering) -- Queen's University, 2008-09-18 09:49:00.07

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Emerging wireless standards are designed to be spectrally efficient to address the high cost of licensing wireless spectra. Unfortunately, the resulting signals have a high peak-to-average ratio that reduces the base station power amplifier efficiency at the back-off power level. The wasted energy is converted to heat that degrades the device reliability and increases the base-station’s carbon footprint and cooling requirements. In addition, these new standards place stringent re- quirements on the amplifier output power, linearity, efficiency, and bandwidth. To improve the back-off efficiency, a Doherty amplifier, which uses two device in parallel for back-off efficiency enhancement, is deployed in a typical base station. Unfortunately, the conventional Doherty amplifier is narrowband and thus cannot satisfy the bandwidth requirement of the modern base station that needs to support multiple standards and backward compatibility. In this thesis, we begin by studying the class F/F−1 high efficiency mode of operation. To this end, we designed a narrowband, harmonically-tuned 3.3 GHz, 10 W GaN high efficiency amplifier. Next, we investigate how to simultaneously achieve high efficiency and broad bandwidth by harnessing the simplified real frequency technique for the broadband matching network design. A 2 to 3 GHz, 45 W GaN amplifier and a 650 to 1050 MHz, 45 W LDMOS amplifier were designed. Finally, we analyze the conventional Doherty amplifier to determine the cause of its narrow bandwidth. We find that the narrow bandwidth can be attributed to the band-limited quarter-wave transformer as well as the widely adopted traditional design technique. As an original contribution to knowledge, we propose a novel Doherty amplifier configuration with intrinsically broadband characteristics by analyzing the load modulation concept and the conventional Doherty amplifier. The proposed amplifier uses asymmetrical drain voltage biases and symmetrical devices and it does not require a complex mixed-signal setup. To demonstrate the proposed concept in practice, we designed a 700 to 1000 MHz, 90 W GaN broadband Doherty amplifier. Moreover, to show that the proposed concept is applicable to high power designs, we designed a 200 W GaN broadband Doherty amplifier in the same band. In addition, to show that the technique is independent of the device technology, we designed a 700 to 900 MHz, 60 W LDMOS broadband Doherty amplifier. Using digital pre-distortion, the three prototypes were shown to be highly linearizable when driven with wideband 20 MHz LTE and WCDMA modulated signals and achieved excellent back-off efficiency. Lastly, using the insights from the previous analyses, we propose a novel mixed-technology Doherty amplifier with an extended and reconfigurable back-off level as well as an improved power utilization factor. The reconfigurability of the proposed amplifier makes it possible to customize the back-off level to achieve the highest average efficiency for a given modulated signal without redesigning the matching networks. A 790 to 960 MHz, 180 W LDMOS/GaN Doherty amplifier demonstrated the extended bandwidth and reconfigurability of the back-off level. The proposed amplifier addresses the shortcomings of the conventional Doherty amplifier and satisfies the many requirements of a modern base station power amplifier.