>41% Efficient 10W Envelope Modulated LTE Downlink Power Amplifier

In this paper envelope Modulation is applied to a class E RF power amplifier (PA). The class E PA is based around a GaN transistor and operates at 2GHz to achieve an efficiency of 74.4% at 11.5W output power (POUT) under continuous wave excitation. The envelope modulator consists of a Switched Mode Power Supply (SMPS) and a class G amplifier, resulting in a combined efficiency of 71.5%. In full Envelope Tracking (ET) mode a total system efficiency of 41.9% is achieve at 10.4W P-OUT when amplifying a 3MHz bandwidth 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) signal. In Envelope Elimination and Restoration (EER) mode under these conditions the efficiency increases to 44.2% at 10.6W P-OUT.