Wonshil Kang

Development of web-based remote laboratory for education and research on RF engineering

This paper presents the design of a remote laboratory platform using web-based technologies for radio frequency (RF), microwave measurements and their analysis. The developed RF remote laboratory system is easy to operate using web-based graphical user interfaces in controlling the test equipments and displaying the test results. The various measurement and analysis engines for RF devices, circuits, and systems are developed using graphical language, LabView. The remote RF laboratory system with the developed user interfaces and engines is used in education and research on RF engineering. The developed system can increase efficiency of education and research on RF engineering cost-effectively by providing similar environment with an actual laboratory using web-based technologies.

Modeling and impedance matching for radio frequency driven plasma lamp considering cold and hot states

A new dual-state impedance matching scheme for a microwave driven plasma lamp using a solid-state power amplifier (SSPA) is presented. The impedance of the plasma lamp depends on the amount of input radio frequency (RF) energy, and therefore has very different values for hot and cold states. First, a method for effectively modeling the electrical characteristics of a plasma lamp that depends on RF power has been proposed. Second, a new technique has been proposed to achieve dual-state impedance matching for two state impedances at two very close frequencies using a T-shaped matching network with two section shunt stub and additional transmission line. The proposed method can achieve dual state impedance matching in two frequency bands located very closely when compared to the conventional methods. The accuracy of the proposed model and the effectiveness of the proposed dual-state matching are verified via a plasma lamp system with a 2.45 GHz 300 W GaN SSPA.

Design of Current-Mode Class-D 900 MHz RF Power Amplifier Using Inverse Class-F Technology

In this paper, Current-Mode Class-D(CMCD) RF Power Amplifier(PA) is designed and implemented at 900 MHz. Conventional CMCD PA has output parallel resonator to reconstruct a fundamental frequency component of the output signal. However the resonator can be removed by connecting inverse class-F PAs because even-harmonic components can be removed by CMCD PA`s push-pull structure. Using load-pull, inverse class-F PA with GaN transistors is designed, and CMCD PA with the inverse class-F PA is implemented. The CMCD PA has 64.5 % drain efficiency, 34.2 dBm output power. Comparing with the drain efficiency of a CMCD PA with parallel resonator, the CMCD with the inverse class-F technology has 13.6 % improved drain efficiency.

Analysis and Compensation of RF Path Imbalance in LINC System

In this paper, we analyse the effect of the path imbalances(gain and phase mismatches) in LINC(LInear amplification with Nonlinear Component) system, and propose a simple scheme using LUTs(Look Up Table) to compensate the path imbalances. The EVM(Error Vector Magnitude) and ACPR(Adjacent Channel Power Ratio) of the LINC system are degraded significantly by the path imbalances because it adopts an outphasing technique. The EVM and ACPR are theoretically extracted for two variables(gain and phase mismatch factors) and 2-D LUTs for those are generated based on the analysis. The efficient and simple compensation scheme for the path imbalances is proposed using the 2-D LUTs. A LINC system with the suggested compensation scheme is implemented, and the proposed method is verified with an experiment. A 16-QAM signal with 1.5 MHz bandwidth is used. Before the compensation, the path gain ratio was 95 % and phase error was . The proposed scheme adjusts those values with 99 % and , and improves ACPR about 18.1 dB.