Wideband Active Load–Pull by Device Output Match Compensation Using a Vector Network Analyzer

This work investigates wideband active load-pull (WALP) on microwave electron devices with a standard vector network analyzer (VNA), solely using calibrated frequency-domain relative measurements. Differently from the methods requiring full time-domain waveform acquisition capabilities, this approach removes any instantaneous bandwidth (BW) requirement, allowing to target modulated signals arbitrarily large BWs. A VNA-based measurement setup is presented, and novel mathematical framework developed in order enable synthesis of an arbitrary load profile suitable numerical algorithms. linear precompensation LS output match device, here implemented by different methods, shown significantly improve speed stability basic secants' iterative method used reach target. Performance results, investigating convergence properties effects dynamic range, are reported for gallium nitride (GaN) high-electron-mobility transistor (HEMT) up 120-MHz BW sub-6-GHz range.