Switched mode power amplifiers: A brief review and comparative study

Low power consumption is a crucial criteria for portable communication devices. Power amplifiers (PA) are the most power-consuming building blocks of RF transceivers. Therefore, the design of a high-efficiency radio frequency power amplifier is the most obvious solution to overcome the battery lifetime limitation in the portable communication systems. Switched mode power amplifiers (SMPA) are suitable for such applications. In this paper a brief review of Switched mode PAs along with the techniques of efficiency improvement and linearization are discussed and at the end a comparative analysis of different SMPAs has been given.