A highly efficient 1.95-GHz, 18-W asymmetric multilevel outphasing transmitter for wideband applications

A 1.95-GHz asymmetric multilevel outphasing (AMO) transmitter with class-E GaN power amplifiers (PAs) and discrete supply modulators is presented. AMO transmitters achieve improved efficiency over envelope tracking (ET) transmitters by replacing the continuous supply modulator with a discrete supply modulator implemented with a fast digital switching network. Outphasing modulation is used to provide the required fine output envelope control. A 4-level supply modulator is implemented that allows for fast and efficient discrete envelope modulation with up to 28-V supply voltages using low-voltage gate drivers and time-alignment logic. With two class-E GaN PAs that achieve 62.5% power-added efficiency (PAE) at 40- dBm peak output power, the AMO transmitter delivers 42.6- dBm peak output power at 1.95-GHz. For a 16-QAM signal at 36-dBm output power, the transmitter achieves 44.2/42.8/41.4% average system efficiency and 2.0/2.1/3.1% EVM for 10/20/40-MHz channel bandwidth, respectively.