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Background
You can find thousands schematic of RF power amplifier on internet, but almost non explain how they were made and how they works. Beside that you will also find very strange instructions how to make coils. So, let's once and for all dig into the subject of RF-Power Amplifier. How does it work and how to calculate the different components values. Please prepare yourself with espresso coffee, efedrin C15H10NO and guarana, because this will be a long page with lot of math and explaining :-) If you don't want to read all this, you can click here to go straight down to the party.
Amplifier stages
It is time to look at the class-C amplifier and try to identify the different stages. You will find 3 stages. Input (red) Output (blue) Driver (black) Let's start focusing on the output stages. At RF out you find a 50 ohm resistor which represent an antenna.
The DC voltage is 12V which also will be the peak voltage of a sine signal. Let's say we want our transmitter to deliver 5W. We can then use the formula to calculate the necessary impedance. R 2 = U /2P = 12*12/2*5 = 14.4 ohm. The driver (transistor) want to see a 14.4 ohm load to be able to deliver 5W of power. As you can see the antenna is 50 ohm and we wish to have 14.4 ohm load, so we must have some kind of impedance transformation. A commonly used impedance transformer is the pi-filter. It consist of 2 capacitors and an inductor. At the input stage we will have the opposite relation. The driver (transistor) has a low impedance (1-10 ohm) and we wants the input to be 50 ohm which is a kind of standard. Again we need a transforming stage to convert the input power with 50 ohm impedance to (1-10 ohm) impedance at the driver input. Most often the input impedance of the driver is not purely resistive, it also contain a reactive part. In this example the input impedance is (5-j5) ohm.
Basic Amplifier
The picture at right show you the same stage with the main components to form a class-C amplifier. The output pifilter is shaped with C3, C4, and L4. An important note is that the transistor has a stray capacitance Cce from emitter to collector. You can find this data in the datasheet of the RF transistor. As you can see, Cce is parallel with C3. When you have calculated C3, you must subtract the stray capacitance Cce to get correct value of C3. Below I explain how to calculate pi-filters. L2 is a large inductor which is not critical in value (1-100uH). Sometimes a ferrite pearl will do the job. L2 act as high impedance (invisible) for RF signal, but it will give the base of the transistor a DC voltage grounding. C1, C2 and L1 forms an input transforming stage which will make the input 50 ohm purely resistive and convert all energy to the low impedance of the transistor.
Why? Since the inductor (L) still have lot of spare energy when the transistor is about to go into ON phase, the current I1 will still be high and so will the voltage at the collector also be. When the transistor enters ON phase it will drag this voltage down to zero and this "discharge" will create high current in the transistor causing a spike of power dissipation. Remember, there is one ON transition, and one OFF transition every cycle of the RF wave. This will happened 100 million times/second so the transistor will have to work harder and become warmer. If we use a too small inductor (L), we will not have enough energy to the following pi-filter and the collector voltage will swing to a negative voltage - an undesirable state. If we choose the inductor (L) value carefully, the collector voltage can swing right down to zero at the moment of transistor turn-ON. This is exactly what is needed to practically eliminate the power dissipation spike at the ON transition. This single change can significantly boost efficiency. Take a look at the simulation below and you will see the difference more clearly. Simulation of inductor (L) The left simulation show you the collector voltage from a large inductor. The green line show the transistor phase ON/OFF. As you can see in the figure, the collector voltage is still high when the transistor is about to enter ON phase. When transistor enter ON phase it has to discharge this voltage, which will cause a current spike! The right simulation use a more optimised inductor. Here you will see that the collector voltage is almost zero when the transistor is about to enter ON phase. There will be no current spike and you will have a cooler system and higher efficiency.
Upside / downside The upside of choosing correct inductor (L) is that you get higher efficiency of the transmitter and your transistor will run much cooler. The peak collector current will be larger too. Peak collector current is larger because while ON, the transistor builds extra current through the small inductor (L). This current is dumped into the pi-filter (during the OFF phase) and must be replenished during the next ON period. The result is that the filter sees a larger swing, which translates to slightly larger output RF power. So you can see that the extra voltage and current that the transistor encounters is not wasted. With a small choke, collector voltage has a higher, narrower peak. This tends to increase even-order harmonics presented to the filter. The filter has more difficulty rejecting the 2nd harmonic. Second harmonics can be reduced by designing the filter for a slightly lower cutoff frequency, and extending the OFF period at the expense of the ON period (this must be done at
the base drive). You'll get slightly less power out as a result. You'll also need to more carefully address power supply filtering at the power supply end of the choke. The small choke results in large peak-to-peak currents drawn from the supply. The supply-end of the choke will tend to get yanked around: excellent, short-leaded bypass capacitors should be employed to ensure a steady voltage at this point. Larger current swings around the transistor/choke/bypass area could cause ground-loop problems for the amplifier that drives the base. Even more care must be taken with component placement and printed circuit layout issues when this design technique is employed. The higher drive levels needed for efficient operation mean that final amp gain is less than normal. More power is required of the driver stage. A compromise is reached where driver dissipation eats into good final amp efficiency. How to calculate the inductor (L) ? The energy needed is dependent on many factors. Higher Q filters will have an inherent voltage swing that is larger due to a current dump, so an inductor having less energy is required. Inductance likely scales with filter Q. You also have losses in the components to consider. The inductor should dump its entire current charge while the transistor is OFF into the following filter. At the filter's input (collector), the current dump will result in a voltage swing dependent on filter Q. Many filters will have low Q, to keep losses low, and to keep component tolerances non critical. For a Q of one, here is a very simple approximation: The inductance required is collector impedance Z divided by 4f, where f is transmitted frequency in Hz. L = Z/( 4f ) Once you calculate a collector choke, you should test it on a computer circuit simulator. The testing goal attempts to swing collector voltage just down to zero at the moment of OFF-to-ON transition, without swinging negative. Alright, it is time to wake up now.. theory part is over : -)
PCB of the 1.5 W Power Amplifier 15w_313.pdf 1.5 W Power Amplifier type class-C (pdf).
Above you can download a (pdf) filer which is the black PCB. The PCB is mirrored because the printed side should be faced down the board during UV exposure. To the right you will find a pic showing the assembly of all components on the same board. This is how the real board should look when you are going to solder the components. It is a board made for surface mounted components, so the copper is on the top layer. Grey area is copper and each component is draw in different colours all to make it easy to identify for you. The scale of the pdf is 1:1 and the picture at right is magnified with 4 times.
Assembly
Good grounding is very important in a RF system. I use bottom layer as Ground and I connect it with the top layer at four places (via-holes) to get a good grounding. Drill a small hole through the PCB and solder a wire in each via-hole to connect the top layer with the bottom layer which is the ground layer. The two four via holes can easy be found on the PCB and are labelled "GND" and marked with red colour. The construction is pretty basic to build and the only part I need to explain a bit is the making of the coils. In this construction I use four hand wounded coils, L3, L5, L6 and L7. The wires of the coils should be Cu or silverplated wire with a diameter of 0.8-1.2mm. I really like the silver plated wire because you don't need to scratch of any enamel of the wire. The downside is that silver plated wire is a bit more expensive. The easiest way to make a coil is to use a drill. For L3 I simply use 5 mm and makes 2 turns. With L5, L6, and L7 I use 6.5 mm drill. Space the inductor a bit. You can click on the top photo to see my coils.
Component support
This project has be constructed to use standard (and easy to find) components. People often write to me and ask for components, PCB or kits for my projects. All component for 1.5W Power amplifier (Click here to download component partl313.txt).
The kit cost 30 Euro (41 USD) and include these components: 1 pcs PCB (etched and drilled) 1 pcs RF transistor MRF313 (Q2) 1 pcs RF transistor BFG193 smd (Q1) 1 pcs 220uF hole mounted (C1) 6 pcs 100nF smd (C2, C3, C4, C5, C6, C7) 2 pcs 1nF smd (C8, C9) 2 pcs Variable capacitor smd (C19, C20) 3 pcs 22pF smd (C10, C11, C12) 4 pcs 15pF smd (C13, C14, C15, C16) 2 pcs 10pF smd (C17, C18) 1 pcs Resistors 10k smd (R5) 4 pcs Resistors 100 ohm smd (R1, R2, R3, R4) 1 pcs Inductor 27uH (L4)
2 pcs 4 pcs
Inductor 10uH smd (L1, L2) Wire for Inductor (L3, L5, L6, L7)
How far will it transmit? This question is very hard to answer. The transmitting distance is very dependent on the environment around you. If you live in a big city with lot of concrete and iron, the transmitter will probably reach about 400m. If you live in smaller city with more open space and not so much concrete and iron your transmitter will reach much longer distance, up to 3km. If you have very open space you will transmit up to 10km. One basic rule is to place the antenna at a high and open position. That will improve your transmitting distance quit a lot.
Final word
In this part, I describes the complete function of a class-C amplifier. I hope you enjoyed the page and feel inspired to build your own power amplifier. if you miss something or want to add some info, do please mail me. According to the law it is legal to build them, but not to use them. I wish you good luck with your projects and thanks for visit my page.
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