Field
This disclosure relates generally to power amplifiers, and more specifically, to reconfigurable power amplifiers for use in transceivers.
Background
Demands for low-power transceivers have been increasing for multi-standard wireless communications. As the power of the transceiver is reduced to meet linearity requirements (e.g., intermodulation distortion (IMD) and spectral emission mask (SEM)), the gain of the power amplifier (PA) needs to be increased to meet the required output power. Since the gain and the linearity do not typically follow the same optimization strategy, the linearity may need to be sacrificed to meet the end-to-end gain. This may be particularly true for the two-stage PA where the input stage provides a limited gain and serves cancellation purposes (e.g. a source-follower driving PA).