A cost effective 500W pallet amplifier for the 144Mhz Amateur

Radio band with NXP 's MRF300AN and MRF300BN

By Andreas Lohmann, DL4XX

Kiefernweg 8, 21217 Seevetal, Germany

Solid state 50V LDMOS linear rf amplifiers have gained great popularity in the Amateur
Radio community in recent years. Two of the newest NXP RF portfolio products are 50V
300W Fets in a standard TO247 package which come along in two versions, namely the
MRF300AN and the MRF300BN1. Being electrically the same the gate and drain pins have
simply been swapped for ease of use in a push-pull circuit. Each single FET is able to
produce more than 300W on 144Mhz therefore building a 144Mhz push-pull amplifier with
these cost effective and rugged workhorses seemed to be a nice challenge.

The amplifier is built to operate from and into a standard 50 Ohm impedance. Primary
design goals were to achieve an acceptable input return loss (>13dB) because most Amateur
Radio transceivers need to work into such loads. Moreover the linear gain should reach >=
23dB and the 1dB compression was targeted to reach >= 57dBm. With these design goals in
my mind I started to build the amplifier.

Sufficient cooling is accomplished by bolting the fets onto a 120mm x 60mm x 8mm copper
heat spreader. The PCB is a standard plated through 1.6mm FR4 laminate that is mounted on
top of the copper plate with 8 x M4 screws which also fix the PCB and the copper spreader
on a well suited aluminum heatsink. This way of mounting ensures excellent thermal and rf
conductivity.

The design of the rf part is straight forward and consists of a series C- tuned 9:1 balun
transformer on an Amidon BN61-202 ferrite core. In order to improve stabilty I
implemented some gate damping which consists of two series RC circuits from both gates to
ground. With these measures the amplifier shows no signs of any parasitic instabilities.

Drain matching is perfomed by a commonly used 1:4 transmission line transformer, DC

decoupling capacitors, some capacitive matching and a short length of RG142 which acts as
a balun transformer. That is the rf part, simple and easy!

Due to the fact that two different transistors in two packags are used I implemented a
variable bias voltage for each fet. Based on NXP's application note AN1643 2 a diode senses
the temperature of the copper cooling plate and reduces the bias voltage with rising
operating temperature so that the idling current remains fairly constant at different die
temperatures. The idling current is set to 750mA for each transistor which should be more
than adequate for linear operation.

1 https://www.nxp.com/products/rf/rf-power/rf-ism-and-broadcast/1-600-mhz-broadcast-and-ism/300-w-cw-over-1.8-
250-mhz-50-v-wideband-rf-power-ldmos-transistor:MRF300AN
2. https://www.nxp.com/docs/en/application-note/AN1643.pdf
The schematic: MRF300AN /MRF 300BN 144Mhz amplifier
Parts list
balun 1 9:1 transformer on Amidon BN61-202 ferrite
balun 2 17cm RG142 coaxial cable
C1 ATC100B 5.1pF
C2 1000pF 50V SMD 0805 COG
C3 10000pF 50V SMD 0805 X7R
C4 1000pF 50V SMD 0805 COG
C5 10000pF 50V SMD 0805 X7R
C6 100nF 50V SMD 0805 X7R
C7 330nF 50V SMD 0805 X7R
C8 ATC100B 1000pF
C9 ATC200B 10nF
C10 Electrolytic capacitor 63V / 470uF
C11 ATC100B 10pF
C12-15 ATC100B 1000pF
Cx (bypass capacitors) 1000pF 50V SMD 0805 COG
D1 1N4148, 100mA (thermal sensor)
L1 drain choke 8 turns 2.5mm², 14mm diameter
PT 1 5K ten-turn potentiometer, set for Idq 750mA
PT2 5K ten-turn potentiometer, set for Idq 750mA
Q1, Q2 MRF300AN, MRF300BN
R1 33 Ohm SMD 1212 ½ Watt
R2 33 Ohm SMD 1212 ½ Watt
R3 470 Ohm SMD 0805 ¼ Watt
R4 47 Ohm SMD 0805 ¼ Watt
T1 1:4 transformer 2 x 12cm HF141-12-FEP
U1 78L05 5V, 100mA Voltage regulator

Pcb layout:
Amplifier ready for testing

Results: Throughout testing the amplifier has never shown any signs of parasitic
oscillations. At 500W output power the amplifier runs well below its 1dB compression
point. The gain is slightly lower than expected which could be caused by the 61 ferrite
material balun transformer of the input circuit. The input return loss is around 15dB.

Drive pwr. (W) Output pwr. (W) Gain dB DC Current @50V (A) DC power input (W) efficiency (%)
1 190 22,8 9 450 ### 42
1,5 300 23 11,1 555 ### 54
2 380 22,8 12,8 640 ### 59
2,5 450 22,6 14 700 ### 64
3 500 22,2 15 750 ### 67
Table1: Power was measured with 2 BIRD 43 Wattmeters with 5C and 500C slugs through a 5- pole
Tschebyscheff lowpass filter with less than 0,3dB loss.

The harmonics are down by at least 18dB which makes the use of a lowpass filter
mandatory. After inserting a 5-pole Tschebyscheff lowpass filter all harmonics are down by
more than 60dB.

Table 2: Harmonics were measured with a

Rigol DSA815TG spectrum analyser and a
directional coupler.

All in all these new MRF300AN and MRF300BN devices have proven to be reliable, linear
and very cost effective. Summing up the costs for all the needed parts to build this amplifier
the ambitious Radio Amateur gets 1 Watt of output power for around 20 cents which means
that the amplifier only costs around 100$ altogether.
Moreover this 144Mhz design could easily be adapted to 50Mhz, 70Mhz and the FM radio
band (87,6-108Mhz).