Steve Huettner of Nuvotronics, Inc.

Have you ever combined two 10-watt power amplifiers only to be disappointed when you only measure 12 watts at the combined output? Besides the usual culprits of thermal path problems, DC supply voltage IR drops and combiner loss, how do you know that the amplifiers are truly in-phase? A recent patent by Nuvotronics, Inc. describes what is known as the “Smart Power Combiner”. This architecture provides a means of electronically sensing phase mismatch under large signal conditions, including the sign of the phase mismatch angle, for N-way power combiners used in solid-state power amplifiers, to help squeeze out that last dB of output power. Power detectors can be integrated into unused chip area of MMIC power amplifiers to provide an indication of relative phases for each of the N amplifiers. Phase control can be done statically or using electronically-controlled phase shifters. In addition, the application of an N-way poly-phase combiner results in excellent input and output reflection coefficients for the overall SSPA.

Biography:

Steve Huettner joined Nuvotronics in January 2011, and holds the position of Chief Engineer. His prior employer, Raytheon Missile Systems he has 30 years of RF sensor design experience and attained the rank of Engineering Fellow. Mr. Huettner serves as Principal Investigator on several Nuvotronics programs including power amplifiers, switch matrices, time delay units, phase shifters and phased arrays. Mr. Huettner has served on the IEEE Compound Semiconductor IC Symposium Technical Program Committee since 2012 and currently serves as Publications Chair in theExecutive Committee. He is first inventor on six US patents. He is the founder and executive editor of the popular website on microwave engineering, Microwaves101.com, which began a partnership with the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society in 2014. He lives in Tucson Arizona. 

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