High Efficiency Power Amplifier Design : Innovation and Challenges, talk by Dr. Tushar Sharma

Name of the Speaker: Dr. Tushar Sharma

Title of the Talk:High Efficiency Power Amplifier Design : Innovation and Challenges

Date and Time: 12 June, 2019 at 4 PM

Venue: Golden Jubilee hall of ECE Department.

ABSTRACT

Power amplifiers (PAs) remain a center of focus to RF power base station systems. The talk focuses on several aspects for enabling high efficiency and bandwidth for small cell, mm Wave PAs for 5G applications. A variety of PA design methodologies for broadband, high power and mm Wave PAs from sub 6GHz to 100 GHz applications. Different waveform engineered PAs have been proposed and implemented in Laterally Diffused MOSFET (LDMOS) , Gallium Nitride (GaN), Indium Phosphide (InP) to achieve high power efficiency at broadband range of frequencies. To enable the key semiconductor technologies, the talk unfolds technology evaluation flow for characterization of device performance using sequential load pull techniques both passive and active systems .For the first time, class GF and GF – 1 amplifiers which have demonstrated outstanding performance by simultaneously tackling both input and output harmonics. The talk also addresses the conventional mystery of second harmonic efficiency “null” in design of high efficiency PAs and reveals new directions for active harmonic load pull and design procedure for high efficiency PAs, which enables PAs in context of wide bandwidth, high efficiency without compromising the quality of service.

Tushar Sharma (S’10) is a post-doctoral research associate at Princeton University, NJ, USA. He completed Ph.D. degree at the University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada in 2018. In 2016 and 2017, he joined NXP Semiconductors, Chandler, AZ, USA, as a Research and Development RF engineer to work in field of gallium nitride technology evaluation and design for 5G base station applications. Mr. Sharma is a recipient of the Izaak Walton Killam Pre-Doctoral Scholarship, Alberta Science and Innovation under 30 Future leader award, the AITF Doctoral Scholarship, the Alberta Transformative Talent scholarship, the Academic Excellence Award, and the Research Productivity Award. He has authored and coauthored over 20 refereed publications and 2 pending US patents. His current research interests include high-efficiency broadband RF/mmW power amplifiers, waveform engineering techniques, and active/passive load-pull techniques.