Hi All,
I will be tasked with finding the proper Zin and Zout for a 1W RF power transistor's maximum Pout, gain, and PAE on a Maury load-pull station, but something has just occurred to me: won't any results coming from such a PA load-pull tuning method be relatively inaccurate? The reason why I say this is that the final (non-linear) PA circuit, when eventually placed in the RF transmitter itself, will be seeing a bandpass filter and/or an antenna, both of which mean that the PA will no longer be seeing the very wideband 50 ohm termination it saw in the load-pull tuning station. This means that the non- linear's PA harmonics will be strongly reflecting back off of the filter's and/or antenna's stopbands and back into the PA's output, affecting its PAE, stability, gain, etc. Aren't I correct about this? And if so, how do I address this problem??
Thanks for any help!
-Bill