Paolo Colantonio

• PhD Microwave and Telecommunications Engineering
• Full Professor at University of Rome Tor Vergata

This paper presents an alternative solution for higher frequency power amplifier design. Using a plasticpackaged GaN transistor and high-efficiency design techniques, a power amplifier for the space-to-earth satellite was designed and fabricated. The proposed design approach relies on determining an appropriate design space for the matching network...

Digital predistortion (DPD) has proven to be an efficient method of linearizing power amplifiers (PAs). In recent years, the use of neural networks (NNs) for DPD has gained momentum. This development can be attributed to the general attention NNs have gotten in recent years, but more importantly, to their ability to find efficient solutions to prob...

This letter presents the design of a Doherty power amplifier (DPA) for satellite applications in the $Ka$ -band downlink (17.3–20.3 GHz) implemented on a 100-nm GaN–Si HEMT technology. The design aims to achieve high gain and very high intrinsic linearity over a wide bandwidth of 3 GHz. The experimental characterization on the fabricated chip dem...

This article presents the design and experimental characterization of a two-way gallium nitride on silicon carbide (GaN-SiC) monolithic Doherty power amplifier (DPA) for deep back-off operation in the 5G FR2 band. The amplifier, including two driver stages on-chip, achieves 35-dBm output power, 30% power-added efficiency, and 16-dB gain at saturati...

This article presents the complete characterization of a $Ka$ -band monolithic (MMIC) high-power amplifier (HPA) developed with a commercial 100-nm gallium nitride (GaN)/Si process provided by OMMIC (now MACOM). The amplifier was conceived for a space-compliant environment, focusing, in particular, on pulsed radar applications, e.g., for syntheti...

This article presents the design strategy and extensive noise-to-power ratio (NPR)-focused characterization of a state-of-the-art Doherty power amplifier (DPA) for satellite applications in the $Ka$ -band downlink (17.3–20.3 GHz), fabricated using a commercial 100-nm GaN-Si high electron mobility transistor technology. The design aims for high ga...

We present a methodology based on Bayesian optimization (BO) for the performance enhancement of a dual-input Doherty power amplifier (DIDPA) operating at 24 GHz under wideband modulation. First, we implement a dual-input control (DIC) algorithm, which allows for the user-defined arbitrary nonlinear shaping between the two inputs of the DIDPA. Then,...

The current trend in satellite communications is moving toward high carrier frequencies and complex modulated signals, which have a nonconstant envelope, such as quadrature amplitude modulation and orthogonal frequency division multiplexing [1] . This trend has a significant impact on the design of the transmitter and in particular of the power a...

This paper presents a novel and accurate procedure for designing a Doherty power amplifier (DPA) for wireless systems. The method is based on a systematic approach to designing the matching networks of both Main and Auxiliary devices, which employs an optimization process to set their input impedance in the corresponding optimal regions obtained fr...

The paper presents a comparison of two design strategies for 3-way Doherty power amplifiers, highlighting the main differences in terms of achievable performance and bandwidth behavior. The proposed approaches have been applied to carry out the design of two microwave monolithic integrated circuits (MMICs) for 28-GHz 5G applications in a 0.15μm gat...

The 25th European Microwave Week (EuMW 2022) took place fully in person in Milan, Italy, on 25–30 September 2022 at the new Milano Convention Center in the City Life District. Luca Perregrini was the general chair, Luciano Tarricone was the general cochair and treasurer, and Maurizio Bozzi was the TPC general chair, who, together with the entire st...

Improvement of power amplifier’s performance is the desired topic in communication systems. There are many efforts are made to provide good input and output matching, high efficiency, sufficient power gain and appropriate output power. This paper presents a power amplifier with optimized input and output matching networks. In the proposed approach,...

In this contribution, a workflow procedure adopted to design a Doherty Power Amplifier (DPA) for broadband Sub-6 5G frequency applications is presented. The approach developed accounts for loading effects of the auxiliary amplifier on the main amplifiers in back-off condition. Moreover, an improved version of optimum region (as opposed to optimum p...

This article presents the design, realization, and experimental characterization of a solid-state power amplifier (SSPA) conceived for $Ka$ -band downlink (17.3–20.2 GHz) satellite communication (SatCom) applications. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first space-borne SSPA realized for this peculiar application to achieve a tech...

This letter presents the design and experimental characterization of a GaN–Si monolithic Doherty power amplifier (PA) for the $Ka$ -band satellite downlink. The fabricated amplifier favorably compares with the current state of the art, achieving from 16.3 to 20.3 GHz (4 GHz, 22% relative bandwidth), a record band to date, 36.6–37.7-dBm output pow...

Digitally controlled Dual-Input Doherty Power Amplifiers (DIDPAs) are becoming increasingly popular due to the flexible input signal splitting between the main and auxiliary stages. Nevertheless, the presence of many degrees of freedom, e.g., input amplitude split and phase displacement as well as biasing for multiple stages, often involves ineffic...

This article presents the design strategy and the implementation of a three-way Doherty power amplifier (DPA3W) to enhance the efficiency at deep power back-off. Theoretical design equations are derived, based on which design charts are drawn to explore the available design space, accounting for practical constraints related to the available techno...

This work presents a comprehensive theoretical analysis of current-mode power amplifiers as a function of input power for different biasing classes under the common simplifying assumption of constant transconductance and hard current cut-off/saturation. Typically, the theoretical analysis of power amplifier performance and behavior are carried out...

In this paper, the design, fabrication, and measurements of an S band multi harmonic tuned power amplifier in GaN technology is described. The amplifier has been designed by exploiting second and third harmonic tuning conditions at both input and output ports of the active device. The amplifier has been realized in a hybrid form, and characterized...

The stacked power amplifier is a widely adopted solution in CMOS technology to overcome breakdown limits. Its application to compound semiconductor technology is instead rather limited especially at very high frequency, where device parasitic reactances make the design extremely challenging, and in gallium nitride technology, which already offers h...

The details of the MRW 2020 are described. Papers selected for the special issues are introduced.

This letter presents an innovative stacked cell, where the common source device is split in two smaller devices leading to a more compact and symmetric structure, with almost negligible parasitics associated to the transistors connection. This novel configuration is rigorously compared, for the first time, with the two classical approaches commonly...

This paper discusses the design steps and experimental characterization of a monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) power amplifier developed for the next generation of K-band 17.3–20.2 GHz very high throughput satellites. The technology used is a commercially available 100-nm gate length gallium nitride on silicon process. The chip was dev...

This paper presents the design, electromagnetic simulation strategies and experimental characterisation of a two‐stage stacked‐FET cell in a 100 nm GaN on Si technology around 18.8 GHz, suited for Ka band satellite downlink applications. A good agreement is found between the electromagnetic simulations and the measured performance on the manufactur...

This letter presents the design and experimental characterization of a K-band high power amplifier (HPA) monolithic microwave-integrated circuit (MMIC) for the next generation of very high throughput satellites (vHTS). The MMIC is a three-stage balanced amplifier realized on a commercial 100-nm gate length gallium nitride on silicon (GaN-Si) techno...

This work presents an experimental investigation of class E power amplifier with parallel shunt network along with two similar amplifier obtained by adding series-connected parallel resonant tanks tuned for the second (class E/F3) and the third harmonics with duty ratio of D=0.33. The aim was obtaining of decreasing of maximum drain-source voltage...

This article presents two broadband frequency multiplier chains (FMCs) fabricated with a standard 130-nm SiGe BiCMOS process. In both solutions, a broadband push-push frequency doubler (x2) operating at 220–360 GHz was employed. In order to properly drive such a doubler, with sufficient input power and bandwidth, two different power amplifiers (PAs...

This paper presents a 4-way combined G-band power amplifier (PA) fabricated with a 130-nm SiGe BiCMOS process. First, a single-ended PA based on the cascode topology (CT) is designed at 185 GHz, which consists of three stages to get an overall gain and an output power higher than 27 dB and 13 dBm, respectively. Then, a 4-way combiner/splitter was d...

Power amplifiers (PAs) are the most power-consuming devices in a transmitter. Their performance in efficiency is crucial to the efficiency of the whole system. Therefore, the issue of high efficiency PA has remained hot over the years. This paper presents an approach to design an S-band single stage class-F PA biased in class-C condition. Through t...

In this paper, we report a high-performance balun with characteristics suitable for future broadband sub-THz differential circuits. The idea of the balun is based on three asymmetric coupled lines, which enhance the odd mode capacitances to equalize the even/odd mode phase velocities. The inner line of the three asymmetric coupled lines is configur...

Very high-power and high-efficiency microwave applications require waveguide structures to combine/divide the power from/to a variable number of high-power solid-state devices. In the literature, among the different waveguide configurations, those capable of providing the maximum output power show a limited relative bandwidth. To overcome this limi...

Frequency reconfigurable antenna is one of the important elements needed for cognitive radio application. Such antenna can be designed using highly resistive (HR) silicon (Si) operating as an optical switch. This letter presents a novel frequency reconfigurable planar monopole antenna suitable for cognitive radio application. The antenna is designe...

Highly resistive (HR) silicon (Si) can behave as a switch when illuminated by optical source of suitable wavelength. Different reconfigurable passive structures, such as filters, waveguides, and antennas, can be constructed using such silicon switches. This letter presents experimental characterization of high and low resistive (HR & LR) silicon fo...

This paper discusses the design, realization and tests of an Engineering Qualified Model (EQM) Solid State Power Amplifier (SSPA) based on Gallium Nitride (GaN) technology, suitable for the second generation Galileo (G2G) constellation. The developed SSPA includes a Power Supply Unit (PSU) to interface the module with the satellite primary bus, and...

This paper presents the design of a Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuit (MMIC) High Power Amplifier (HPA) for S-band active radar systems. The circuit, fabricated in a 0.25 um Gallium Nitride (GaN), is based on a three-stage architecture with the final one conceived to work in class F configuration to maximize the efficiency. In a bandwidth of...

This paper proposes a design method to minimize the phase distortion (AM/PM) in Gallium Nitride (GaN) Power Amplifiers (PAs), without significantly worsening other key features such as efficiency, amplitude distortion and gain. The design strategy consists in the adoption of a smart two-stage architecture, in which the driver stage is devised to ac...

In this article, we use a tool NEC (Numerical Electromagnetic Code) to model antenna on top of a tower structure. Simulation results for the parasitic effect of the tower on characteristics of broadcast DVB-T (Digital Video Broadcasting Terrestrial) antenna such as input impedance, return loss, gain, front-to-back ratio and radiation patterns are r...

This paper presents the theoretical analysis of phase distortion (AM/PM) mechanisms in Gallium Nitride (GaN) Doherty power amplifiers and a novel approach to optimize the trade-off between linearity and efficiency. In particular, it is demonstrated how it is possible to mitigate the AM/PM by designing a suitable mismatch at the input of the active...

Starting from the mathematical bases of waveform engineering, this contribution demonstrates the effectiveness of class-F power amplifier design in different bias conditions, provided the correct harmonic content is presented at the input. To validate the theoretical assumptions, low-frequency multiharmonic load-pull measurements are carried out on...

This contribution reports the design of an X-band MMIC power amplifier in a 0.25 um GaN technology, proposing for the first time a harmonic manipulation approach on a class C bias condition. Output network provides the power matching condition at fundamental frequency and an open circuit condition at the 3rd harmonic; the correct phase ratio betwee...

This chapter describes the methodologies and approaches used to design power amplifiers (PAs) for high-frequency applications. The available technologies and their pros and cons are discussed in detail. Particular attention is devoted to highlight the PAs’ characteristics in relation to device properties and to link the modeling aspects to the avai...

This contribution presents a novel design methodology for Gallium Nitride (GaN) Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuit (MMIC) Doherty Power Amplifiers (DPAs). The proposed solution allows to mitigate the relevant phase distortion (AM/PM) and gain penalty, typically registered in GaN DPAs, without worsening other key features such as back-off effic...