A new harmonic termination that controls the waveform of the drain current to be rectangular is developed for high-efficiency power amplifier modules. Its harmonic termination is a short circuit at the third harmonic and a non-short circuit at the second harmonic. It is found experimentally and confirmed by simulation that the load-matching condition at the third-order harmonic improves the efficiency of a transistor by more than 13%. By using this tuning, 57.7% power-added efficiency of the module is achieved at the output power of 29.9 dBm with ACP of -50 dBc, NACP of -65 dBc at 925 MHz and Vdd of 3.5 V.

Microwave power transistors for high efficiency applications are surveyed briefly. Methodologies for microwave transistor power amplifier circuit design are discussed. Microwave transistor power amplifiers are categorized according to their operation into classes A, AB, B, C, and F, and some preliminary results on output power, power efficiency, and power gain for the amplifiers in various classes are provided by an analysis using an ideal transistor model. Circuit conditions controlling the voltage and current waveforms and device parameters such as the knee voltage in the device current-voltage characteristics are discussed for viewpoint of realizing high-efficiency power amplifier operation. A practical power amplifier design is considered with respect to the device characteristics and circuit conditions.

As the demand for communications via satellite is rapidly increasing, techniques that produce large traffic capacity are becoming more and more appreciated. We present a class of block coded modulation (BCM) and multiple block coded modulation (MBCM) schemes in this paper. While the BCM scheme is directly derived from our previous work, the MBCM schemes are newly developed using a technique of multiple symbol transmission via a single trellis branch. This class of BCM and MBCM schemes is both power and bandwidth efficient. They also have an advantage in holding both a trellis and a block structure. Code structures, decoding trellises and the corresponding branch variables of these BCM and MBCM schemes are all derived. Their applications to satellite communications are discussed. Computer simulations are performed to verify coding gain performance.

This paper describes the performance of AlGaAs/GaAs HBT's developed for power applications. Their applicability to power amplifiers used in digital mobile radio communications is examined through measurement and numerical simulation, considering both power capability and linearity. Power HBT's with carbon-doped base layers showed DC current gains over 90. A linear gain of 19.2 dB, a maximum output RF power of 32.5 dBm, and a power added efficiency of 56 percent were obtained at 950 MHz. Numerical simulations showed that the power efficiency of HBT amplifiers could be improved by using harmonic trap circuits. Intermodulation measurements showed that third-order distortions were at most 21 dBc level at the 1-dB gain compression point. RF spectrum simulations using π/4 shift QPSK modulation showed that side-band spectrum generation was less than 45 dBc level at points 50 kHz off of the carrier frequency. These properties indicate that the power handling capabilities and linearity of HBT amplifiers offer promising potentials for digital mobile radio communications.