RF Power Amplifiers and Projects 13 his chapter describes the design and construction of power RF amplifiers for use in an Amateur Radio station. Dick Ehrhorn, W4ETO, contributed materially to this section. T An amplifier may be required to develop as much as 1500 W of RF output power, the legal maximum in the United States. The voltages and currents needed to perform this feat are much higher than those found in other amateur equipment—the voltage and current levels are potentially lethal, in fact. Every component in an RF power amplifier must be carefully selected to endure these high electrical stress levels without failing. Large amounts of heat are produced in the amplifier and must be dissipated safely. Generation of spurious signals must be minimized, not only for legal reasons, but also to preserve good neighborhood relationships. Every one of these challenges must be overcome to produce a loud, clean signal from a safe and reliable amplifier. RF Power Amplifiers and Projects 13.1 Types of Power Amplifiers Power amplifiers are categorized by their power level, intended frequencies of operation, device type, class of operation and circuit configuration. Within each of these categories there almost always are two or more options available. Choosing the most appropriate set of options from all those available is the fundamental concept of design. SOLID STATE VERSUS VACUUM TUBES With the exception of high-power amplifiers, nearly all items of amateur equipment manufactured commercially today use solid-state (semiconductor) devices exclusively. Semiconductor diodes, transistors and integrated circuits (ICs) offer several advantages in designing and fabricating equipment: • Compact design—Even with their heat sinks, solid-state devices are smaller than functionally equiva- lent tubes, allowing smaller packages. • “No-tune-up” operation—By their nature, transistors and ICs lend themselves to low impedance, broadband operation. Fixed-tuned filters made with readily available components can be used to suppress harmonics and other spurious signals. Bandswitching of such filters is easily accomplished when necessary; it often is done using solid-state switches. Tube amplifiers, on the other hand, usually must be retuned on each band, and even for significant frequency movement within a band. • Long life—Transistors and other semiconductor devices have extremely long lives if properly used and cooled. When employed in properly designed equipment, they should last for the entire useful life of the equipment—commonly 100,000 hours or more. Vacuum tubes wear out as their filaments (and sometimes other parts) deteriorate with time in normal operation; the useful life of a typical vacuum tube may be on the order of 10,000 to 20,000 hours. • Manufacturing ease—Most solid-state devices are ideally suited for printed-circuit-board fabrication. The low voltages and low impedances that typify transistor and IC circuitry work very well on printed circuits (some circuits use the circuit board traces themselves as circuit elements); the high imped- ances found with vacuum tubes do not. The IC or transistor’s physical size and shape also lends itself well to printed circuits and the devices usually can be soldered right to the board. These advantages in fabrication mean reduced manufacturing costs. Based on all these facts, it might seem that there would be no place for vacuum tubes in a solid state world. Transistors and ICs do have significant limitations, however, especially in a practical sense. Individual RF power transistors avail- able today cannot develop more than approximately 150 W output; this figure has not changed much in the past two decades. Individual present-day transistors cannot generally handle the combination of current and voltage needed, nor can they safely dispose of the amount of heat dissipated, for RF amplification to higher power levels. So pairs of transistors, or even pairs of pairs, are usually employed in practical power amplifier designs, even at the 100-W level. Beyond the 300-W output level, somewhat exotic (at least for most radio amateurs) techniques of power combination from multiple amplifiers ordinarily must be used. Although this is commonly done in commercial equipment, it is an expensive proposition. It also is far easier to ensure safe cooling of vacuum tubes, which operate satisfactorily at surface temperatures as high as 150-200°C and may be cooled by simply blowing sufficient ambient air past or through their relative large cooling surfaces. The very small cooling surfaces of power transistors should be held to 75-100°C to avoid drastically shortening their life expectancy. Thus, assuming worst-case 50°C ambient air temperature, the large cooling surface of a vacuum tube can be allowed to rise 100- 150°C above ambient, while the small surface of a transistor must not be allowed to rise more than about 13.2 Chapter 13 50°C. Moreover, power tubes are considerably more likely than transistors to survive, without signifi- cant damage, the rare instance of severe overheating. Furthermore, RF power transistors are much less tolerant of electrical abuse than are most vacuum tubes. An overvoltage spike lasting only microseconds can—and is likely to—destroy transistors costing $75 to $150 each. A comparable spike is unlikely to have any effect on a tube. So the important message is this: designing with expensive RF power transistors demands using extreme caution to ensure that adequate thermal and electrical protection is provided. It is an area best left to knowledgeable designers. Even if one ignores the challenge of the RF portions of a high-power transistor amplifier, there is the dc power supply to consider. A solid-state amplifier capable of delivering 1 kW of RF output might require regulated (and transient-free) 50 V at more than 40 A. Developing that much current is a challenging and expensive task. These limitations considered, solid-state amplifiers have significant practical advantages up to a couple of hundred watts output. Beyond that point, and certainly at the kilowatt level, the vacuum tube still reigns for amateur constructors because of its cost-effectiveness and ease of equipment design. CLASSES OF OPERATION The class of operation of an amplifier stage is defined by its conduction angle, the angular portion of each RF drive cycle, in degrees, during which plate current (or collector or drain current in the case of transistors) flows. This, in turn, determines the amplifier’s gain, efficiency, linearity and input and output impedances. • Class A: The conduction angle is 360°. DC bias and RF drive level are set so that the device is not driven to output current cutoff at any point in the driving-voltage cycle, so some device output current flows throughout the complete 360° of the cycle (see Fig 13.1A). Output voltage is generated by the variation of output current flowing through the load resistance. Maximum linearity and gain are achieved in a Class A amplifier, but the efficiency of the stage is low. Maximum theoretical efficiency is 50%, but 25 to 30% is more common in practice. • Class AB: The conduction angle is greater than 180° but less than 360° (see Fig 13.1B). In other words, dc bias and drive level are adjusted so device output current flows during appre- ciably more than half the drive cycle, but less than the whole drive cycle. Efficiency is much better than Class A, typically reaching 50-60% at peak output power. Class AB linearity and gain are not as good as that achieved in Class A, but are very acceptable for even the most rigorous high-power SSB applica- tions in Amateur Radio. Class AB vacuum tube amplifiers are further defined as class AB1 or AB2. In class AB1, the grid is not driven positive so no grid current flows. Virtually no drive power is required, and gain is quite high, typically 15-20 dB. The load on the driving stage is relatively constant throughout the RF cycle. Efficiency typically exceeds 50% at maximum output. In Class AB2, the grid is driven positive on peaks and some Fig 13.1—Amplifying device grid current flows. Efficiency commonly reaches 60%, at the output current for various expense of greater demands placed on the driving stage and classes of operation. All assume slightly reduced linearity. Gain commonly reaches 15 dB. a sinusoidal drive signal. RF Power Amplifiers and Projects 13.3 • Class B: Conduction angle = 180°. Bias and RF drive are set so that the device is just cut off with no signal applied (see Fig 13.1C), and device output current flows during one half of the drive cycle. Efficiency commonly reaches as high as 65%, with fully acceptable linearity. • Class C: The conduction angle is much less than 180°—typically 90°. DC bias is adjusted so that the device is cut off when no drive signal is applied. Output current flows only during positive crests in the drive cycle (see Fig 13.1D), so it consists of pulses at the drive frequency. Efficiency is relatively high—up to 80%—but linearity is extremely poor. Thus Class C amplifiers are not suitable for amplification of amplitude-modulated signals such as SSB or AM, but are quite satisfactory for use in on-off keyed stages or with frequency or phase modulation. Gain is lower than for the previous classes of operation, typically 10-13 dB. • Classes D through H use various switched mode techniques and are not commonly found in amateur service. Their prime virtue is high efficiency, and they are used in a wide range of specialized audio and RF applications to reduce power-supply requirements and dissipated heat. These classes of RF amplifiers require fairly sophisticated design and adjustment techniques, particularly at high-power levels. The additional complexity and cost could rarely if ever be justified for amateur service.