Pre-pulsing characterization of GaN PAs with dynamic supply

Nonlinear charge-trapping observed in the electrical characteristics of GaN FETs can introduce distortion in GaN-based power amplifiers (PA), especially in supply-modulated (envelope tracking) transmitters. A measurement approach is developed for large signal characterization of GaN-based PAs operated with dynamic bias supplies for efficiency enhancement. A new pre-pulsing technique is introduced which forces the active device to operate in trapping and thermal states close to those found in the actual application. The characteristics obtained with this technique are shown to give an accurate description of the PA performance. The measured data are used for the direct computation of pre-distortion functions for the linearization of a 10-GHz Envelope Tracking (ET) 12-W GaN MMIC PA for amplitude-modulated pulsed radar transmitters. The demonstrated measurement method can be also exploited for the identification of PA behavioral models, which take into account trapping effects.