This contribution gives an overview of background, design, working principles, and management issues of some scientific highlights, and of the benefits of the Network of Excellence TARGET (Top Amplifier Research Groups in a European Team).

This paper presents a feasibility study for the implementation of a concurrent dual-band power amplifier (PA) design suitable for 1.98 GHz WCDMA and 3.42 GHz WiMAX digital systems. The proposed PA design was compared with a test bed based on a pair of dedicated single-frequency band PAs. The dual-band PA exhibited simultaneous peak output power levels of 24 and 17 dBm in the lower and in the higher bands to maintain ACPR and EVM requirements below 33 dBc and 5%, respectively. The conclusions drawn in the paper justify the design effort of this innovative solution, which is capable of increasing the PAE for concurrent dual-band operation maintaining the performance of more conventional solutions.

In this paper, the main nonidealities appearing in polar transmitters will be addressed, together with several implementation considerations. Special attention will be paid to the role of AM modulation nonlinearity and parasitic AM-to-PM conversion, once architecture mechanisms such as time-delay mismatch between branches or limited bandwidth in the amplitude path are controlled. The device limiting factors for a highly efficient switched mode operation and a linear amplitude modulation will be identified. Some circuit design and implementation guidelines for the RF modulating stage and the envelope amplifier will be discussed, to finish with system-level analysis considerations under two-tone and real communication signal excitations.

This paper presents an investigation of a concurrent low-cost dual-band power amplifier (PA) fabricated in SiGe technology, able to simultaneously operate at two frequencies of 2.45 and 3.5-GHz, including an evaluation of its system level performance potentiality. Taking into account the technology novelty and the lack of device characterization and modeling, a hybrid (MIC) approach has been adopted both for a fast prototyping of the PA and for the evaluation of the device potentiality based on an extensive linear and nonlinear characterization. The comparison of PA performance in single-band or concurrent mode operation will be presented. In particular, the measured PA prototype shows an output power of 17.2 and 17-dBm at a 1-dB compression point, at 2.45 and 3.5-GHz, respectively, for CW single-mode operation, with a power added efficiency around 20%. System-level analysis predicts that, when the PA is operated under the 20-MHz Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (OFDM) concurrent signals, the maximum output power levels to maintain the Error Vector Magnitude (EVM) within 5% are 11 and 3.5-dBm at 2.45 and 3.5-GHz, respectively. Moreover, new concepts and possible new system architectures for the development of the next generation of the multi-band transceiver front-end will be provided with an extensive system-level evaluation of the amplifier.

The use of digital predistortion for linearizing a millimeter-wave power amplifier (PA) is investigated. A PA operating at 38 GHz is designed using an accurate non-quasi-static transistor model, taking into account both short- and long-term memory effects. A realistic test signal is then used for the identification of a nonlinear auto-regressive moving average (NARMA) behavioral model of the PA. The NARMA-based digital predistorter is then derived and formulated in terms of basic predistortion cells, especially suitable for efficient implementation in an FPGA. The performance of the predistortion solution is preliminarily assessed by means of computer simulations.

This paper describes some aspects of the fabrication and modeling of a GaN device to be employed in a power amplifier covering one WiMAX frequency band. The work has been carried out in the frame of the TARGET's NoE work package WiSELPAS. Details concerning the AlGaN/GaN device technology and the performed linear and nonlinear measurements are provided. Since these new devices require specific nonlinear models, a procedure for selecting an appropriate simplified nonlinear model and for extracting its parameters is discussed and evaluated. The developed nonlinear model has been experimentally tested under linear and nonlinear conditions. The agreement between experimental and model-predicted performance suggests that the described model could be useful in a preliminary power amplifier design.

A recently proposed technique for the distributed modeling of extrinsic parasitic effects in electron devices is used for the very first time in conjunction with a lumped equivalent circuit model for the intrinsic device.

Nonlinear modeling of 0.1 μm InP HEMTs for W-band applications is considered here, leading to extremely accurate predictions of harmonic distortion and power added efficiency at the fundamental frequencies of 27 and 94 GHz.

The distributed parasitic network is identified through accurate electromagnetic simulations up to the upper frequency limit of the millimeter-wave band (300 GHz), while standard pulsed I/V and S-parameter measurements up to 67 GHz are used for the identification of the intrinsic device model.

In the framework of the Top Amplifier Research Groups in a European Team (TARGET) project, we developed a new electrical method for the temperature measurement of HEMTs and performed several unique studies on the self-heating effects in AlGaN/GaN HEMTs. This method, in combination with transient interferometric mapping (TIM), provides a fundamental understanding of the heat propagation in a transient state of HEMTs. The AlGaN/GaN/Si HEMT thermal resistance was determined to be ~70 K/W after 400 ns from the start of a pulse, and the heating time constant was ~200 ns. Our experimental methods were further applied on multifinger high-power AlGaN/GaN/sapphire HEMTs. The TIM method indicates that the airbridge structure serves as a cooler, removing approximately 10% of the heat energy. In the next study we used TIM and the micro-Raman technique to quantify thermal boundary resistance (TBR) between different wafer materials and GaN epi-structure. We found TBR to be ~7 × 10−8 m2K/W for GaN/Si and ~1.2 × 10−7 m2K/W for GaN/SiC interfaces. The role of TBR at the GaN/sapphire interface was found to be less important.