Implementation of dynamic bias and digital predistortion to enhance efficiency and linearity in a 100 W RF amplifier with OFDM signal

Abstract

This paper presents a technique that enables both efficiency and linearity enhancements of power amplifiers (PA) used in communication systems. It consists in the implementation of a dynamic bias control combined with digital base-band predistortion. The aim of this paper is to describe a methodology and successive steps of the design procedure to reach optimum performances in terms of power added efficiency (PAE) and linearity. It is here applied to a 100 W wide-band lateral diffused metal oxide semiconductor (LDMOS) push–pull amplifier (50–500 MHz) driven by orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) signals. When the amplifier is driven by a continuous wave (CW) signal and operates at a constant 28 V drain bias voltage, it exhibits 100 W output power and 60% PAE. When it is driven by an OFDM signal, a 10 dB output power back-off is necessary to have a −25 dBc adjacent channel power ratio (ACPR) and PAE decreases down to 10%. By properly implementing an envelope tracking bias system, 40 W output power along with 38% PAE and −27 dBc ACPR have been reached. Applying base-band digital predistortion provides additional linearity improvements at high PAE (for only one point PAE lost, a 5 dB improvement is obtained for ACPR).