2010 10th Mediterranean Microwave Symposium, MMS 2010, Guzelyurt, Cyprus (Gkry), 25 - 27 August 2010, pp.299-302
The trade-off between efficiency and tunability has been revealed in frequency-tunable amplifiers. Several tunable amplifiers have been designed using various varactor diode topologies and their performances are compared. Simulation results demonstrate that the tunable amplifiers using anti-series distortion-free varactor stack (DFVS) topologies provide superior tunability and power added efficiency (PAE) than those using conventional varactor diode topologies. A tunable amplifier is designed that can tune from 1.74-to-2.36 GHz and provide 42% PAE. This range of tunability is sufficient to accommodate DCS-1800, PCS-1900, DECT and UMTS standards, and thus it may help to reduce the complexity of multimode and reconfigurable radios. © 2010 IEEE.