Winning Watts

Macquarie University electronics PhD student Michael Boers has defeated competitors from universities in the USA, Canada and Korea by designing and building an ultra-efficient radio frequency (RF) power amplifier.

Boers won the annual the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers Microwave Techniques and Technology Society's (MTT-S) High Efficiency Power Amplifier Design Competition, held in Hawaii at the beginning of June, which was timed to coincide with the International Microwave Symposium (IMS) and the Radio Frequency Integrated Circuit (RFIC) conference.

Designing better microwave power amplifiers is the focus of much international academic and commercial attention due to our need to more efficiently convert electrical power to the microwave energy required by today's wireless systems such as satellite transceivers, cellular base stations and most importantly cell phones where high efficiency translates directly to battery life (that is, the higher the efficiency, the longer one can talk on a given cell phone).