Power amplifiers (PAs) for next generation of communication systems are expected to operate at higher frequency and bandwidth to support the growing data rates. The Doherty Power Amplifier (DPA) is one of the most promising circuits for the development of high efficiency PAs: its inherent structure, exploiting two interacting active devices, requires a nonlinear mixed-mode TCAD analysis with multiple devices. In this work we present for the first time a complete TCAD simulation of a DPA, exploiting an improved version of our in-house Harmonic-Balance based drift–diffusion simulator for large-signal mixed-mode analysis. We thus demonstrate that TCAD simulations are mature to assist the design of complex stages requiring multi-device large-signal analysis.

下一代通信系统的功率放大器 (PA) 有望在更高的频率和带宽下运行，以支持不断增长的数据速率。Doherty 功率放大器 (DPA) 是用于开发高效 PA 的最有前途的电路之一：其固有结构利用两个相互作用的有源器件，需要对多个器件进行非线性混合模式 TCAD 分析。在这项工作中，我们首次展示了 DPA 的完整 TCAD 模拟，利用我们内部基于谐波平衡的漂移扩散模拟器的改进版本进行大信号混合模式分析。因此，我们证明 TCAD 模拟已经成熟，可以帮助设计需要多器件大信号分析的复杂阶段。