Broadband Linear Power Amplifier for Picocell Basestation Application

—This paper presents the design of a highly linear broadband power amplifier (PA) operating from 200MHz to 3GHz for Long Term Evolution (LTE) pico-cell base station. The monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) PA is realized with 0.25-μm Enhancement Mode Pseudomorphic High Electron Mobility Transistor (E-pHEMT) process. The broadband PA employs a novel dual feedback technique to achieve the broadband power gain and linearity performance. A low pass input matching network is integrated to suppress the out of band interference. The PA delivers power gain of more than 12dB from 200MHz to 3GHz with peak gain of 20dBm at 450MHz. The achieved OIP3 across the operating frequency is 40dBm with corresponding power added efficiency (PAE) of 45%. The fully matched PA serves to be a good solution for LTE pico-cell base station.