TY - JOUR
T1 - Globally Optimal Matching Networks With Lossy Passives and Efficiency Bounds
AU - Chappidi, Chandrakanth Reddy
AU - Sengupta, Kaushik
N1 - Funding Information:
Manuscript received December 9, 2016; revised March 24, 2017 and April 25, 2017; accepted June 21, 2017. Date of publication September 11, 2017; date of current version January 5, 2018. This work was supported by ONR under Grant N00014-15-1-2217. This paper was recommended by Associate Editor Z. Wang. (Corresponding author: Kaushik Sengupta.) The authors are with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544 USA (e-mail: kaushiks@princeton.edu).
Funding Information:
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The authors would like to acknowledge NSF and ONR for support and thank MOSIS for IC fabrication.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 IEEE.
PY - 2018/1
Y1 - 2018/1
N2 - Impedance transformation is one of the central concepts in high-frequency circuits and systems and is used ubiquitously for optimal power matching, noise matching, and high-efficiency power delivery to the antenna by power amplifiers. The matching network can be generally expressed as a path on the Smith chart and given the load and source impedances, there are theoretically infinite ways to achieve the transformation. When losses are included, each path will encounter a different loss, and currently, no comprehensive theory exist for finding the most optimal matching network. Furthermore, the networks will also provide different bandwidths of operation. Due to the matching network losses, it is often not optimal to force conjugate matching for maximizing end-to-end power transfer efficiency. In this paper, we provide a method toward finding 1) the globally most efficient path between two arbitrary impedances with lossy passives; 2) given the source and the load impedances, the optimal (typically non-conjugate) impedance to match and the highest efficiency path to reach the impedance; and 3) upper bounds on achievable efficiencies under the various scenarios. This paper also proposes ways to combine this method with nonlinear load-pull simulations for optimal combiner and matching network for integrated power amplifiers. This analysis creates interesting ways to maximize efficiency and bandwidths simultaneously and the paper also discusses this joint optimization. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive analysis of globally optimal impedance transformation networks between arbitrary impedances with lossy passives.
AB - Impedance transformation is one of the central concepts in high-frequency circuits and systems and is used ubiquitously for optimal power matching, noise matching, and high-efficiency power delivery to the antenna by power amplifiers. The matching network can be generally expressed as a path on the Smith chart and given the load and source impedances, there are theoretically infinite ways to achieve the transformation. When losses are included, each path will encounter a different loss, and currently, no comprehensive theory exist for finding the most optimal matching network. Furthermore, the networks will also provide different bandwidths of operation. Due to the matching network losses, it is often not optimal to force conjugate matching for maximizing end-to-end power transfer efficiency. In this paper, we provide a method toward finding 1) the globally most efficient path between two arbitrary impedances with lossy passives; 2) given the source and the load impedances, the optimal (typically non-conjugate) impedance to match and the highest efficiency path to reach the impedance; and 3) upper bounds on achievable efficiencies under the various scenarios. This paper also proposes ways to combine this method with nonlinear load-pull simulations for optimal combiner and matching network for integrated power amplifiers. This analysis creates interesting ways to maximize efficiency and bandwidths simultaneously and the paper also discusses this joint optimization. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive analysis of globally optimal impedance transformation networks between arbitrary impedances with lossy passives.
KW - LNA
KW - RF
KW - impedance matching
KW - lossy passives
KW - mm-wave
KW - noise matching
KW - power amplifier
KW - quality factors
KW - smith chart
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85030213195&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85030213195&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/TCSI.2017.2720179
DO - 10.1109/TCSI.2017.2720179
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85030213195
SN - 1549-8328
VL - 65
SP - 257
EP - 269
JO - IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers
JF - IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers
IS - 1
M1 - 8031276
ER -