Description
Obtaining both high power and high efficiency is a difficult challenge at RF and microwave frequencies. At even higher frequencies, mm-wave frequencies and beyond (30 GHz -- 300 GHz), the problem is even more difficult due to the lower power gain of devies, limited by intrinsic capacitances in the power device and low quality passive components, which make power combining structures difficult to realize. This report proposes a new architecture for a transmitter that utilizes a quadrature antenna array, or an array of in-phase and quadrature-phase power amplifiers, which power combine in space. Each antenna element is driven by a highly efficiency switching amplifier which can only convey 1-bit of amplitude information. The full amplitude resolution of the signal is thus conveyed digitally by combining several such signals in space.