The Doherty amplifier is a modified class B radio frequency amplifier invented by William H. Doherty of Bell Telephone Laboratories Inc in 1936. Whereas conventional class B amplifiers can clip on high input-signal levels, the Doherty power amplifier can accommodate signals with high peak-to-average power ratios by using two amplifier circuits within the one overall amplifier to accommodate the different signal levels. In this way, the amplifier achieves a high level of linearity while retaining good power efficiency.
In Doherty's day, within the Western Electric product line, the eponymous electronic device was operated as a linear amplifier with a driver which was modulated. In the 50,000-watt implementation, the driver was a complete 5,000-watt transmitter which could, if necessary, be operated independently of the Doherty amplifier and the Doherty amplifier was used to raise the 5,000-watt level to the required 50,000-watt level.
The amplifier was usually configured as a grounded-cathode, carrier–peak amplifier using two vacuum tubes in parallel connection, one as a class B carrier tube and the other as a class B peak tube (power transistors in modern implementations). The tubes' source (driver) and load (antenna) were split and combined through +90 and −90 degree phase shifting networks.[1]
Alternate configurations included a grounded-grid carrier tube and a grounded-cathode peak tube whereby the driver power was effectively passed-through the carrier tube and was added to the resulting output power, but this benefit was more appropriate for the earlier and less efficient triode implementations[2] rather than the later and more efficient tetrode implementations.[3]
- ^ In order to circumvent Western Electric's patent, RCA utilized +90 and +270 degree phase shifts; as any student of phasor math knows, +270 degrees is equivalent to −90 degrees, therefore these are effectively the same as +90 and −90 degree phase shifts (RCA BT-50D, et al.)
- ^ WE 117, CE 317A, CE 317B, WAPE station-built, et al.
- ^ CE 317C