A 5.8GHz, 47% efficiency, linear outphase power amplifier with fully integrated power combiner

This paper presents an outphase power amplifier, consisting of two class-E power amplifiers and a power combiner. Using shielded coplanar striplines, the first low-loss, fully integrated 5.8 GHz Wilkinson combiner is realized with excellent isolation for a robust outphase PA. The outphase power amplifier, fabricated in IBM 7WL SiGe BiCMOS, achieves a peak efficiency of 47% at the maximum output power of 18.5dBm. For an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing input signal of 32 sub-channels of 64-QAM, the adjacent channel power leakage ratio is better than 32dBc