A Study on the Bandwidth of the Transformer Matching Circuits

Abstract

With the spread of the 5th generation mobile phone, the increase of the output power of PA (power amplifier) has become important, and in recent years, differential amplifiers that can increase the output voltage amplitude for the power supply voltage have been examined from the viewpoint of power synthesis. In the case of a differential PA, in addition to the advantage of voltage amplitude, the load impedance can be set 4 times as much as that of a single-ended PA, which makes it possible to reduce the impact of parasitic resistance. With the study of the differential PA, many transformer matching circuits have been studied in addition to the LC matching circuits that have been widely used in the past. The transformer matching circuit can easily realize the differential-single conversion, and the transformer matching circuit is an indispensable technology in the differential PA. As with the LC matching circuit, widening the bandwidth of the transformer matching circuit is at issue. In this paper, characteristics of basic transformer matching circuits are analyzed by adding input/output shunt capacitance to transformers and the conditions of bandwidth improvement are clarified. In addition, by comparing the FBW (fractional bandwidth) with the LC 2-stage matching circuit, it is shown that the FBW can be competitive.