1 kW MHz Wideband Class E Power Amplifier
Jiale Xu, Zikang Tong, Juan Rivas-Davila
Abstract
Class E power amplifiers are widely used in high-frequency applications due to their simplicity and use of only one ground-referenced switch. However, Class E power amplifiers are usually tuned to operate at a fixed frequency due to their resonant nature. Extending the bandwidth of these switch-mode power amplifiers is beneficial in many applications, such as plasma generators and wireless power transfer systems. In this paper, we present a 1 kW wideband Class E power amplifier using Silicon Carbide (SiC) MOSFETs that achieves 93% efficiency at 13.56 MHz with a bandwidth of <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\pm$</tex-math></inline-formula> 1 MHz. We incorporate a reactance compensation network in the output loading stage to achieve wideband operation; design a custom gate drive circuit to reduce the gate power loss and improve thermal performance compared to using a gate driver IC. The total gate power of one SiC MOSFET is measured to be 1.55 W at 13.56 MHz.