Distortion in polar modulated CMOS RF power amplifiers

Polar modulation of a switching RF amplifier is an excellent candidate to combine both linearity, efficiency and CMOS integration for RF power amplifiers used in mobile and wireless communication systems. In this paper, the different sources of distortion associated with polar modulation are discussed and verified by measurement results. A fully integrated linearized CMOS RF Power Amplifier for GSM–EDGE, realized in a 0.18 μm CMOS technology, is used as a benchmark to validate the presented theory. It is demonstrated how the combination of a differential delay between the amplitude signal and the phase signal, together with the AM–PM distortion of the Class E amplifier, generates an asymmetry in the output spectrum. The effect of low-pass filtering of the envelope signal is investigated and the degradation on the linearity with and without delay adjustment is given.