Theoretical and experimental study of amplifier linearization basedon harmonic and baseband signal injection technique

This paper presents a novel linearization scheme for RF amplifiers based on simultaneous harmonic and baseband signal injection. In this method, second-order frequency components generated by predistortion circuits are fed to the input of the main amplifier to mix with the fundamental signal for third-order intermodulation distortion (IMD) cancellation. A general and rigorous analytical formulation of baseband, harmonic, and the proposed injection techniques is presented, and from these derived expressions, the optimum conditions for IMD suppression are developed. The result also reveals the practical limitation of the proposed method subject to gain and phase error associated with the RF and baseband circuitry. For comparison purposes, an amplifying system is constructed for the experimental investigation of second-order signal injection approach. Both two-tone and digitally modulated waveforms are employed in these measurements     

改善放大器三阶交调失真的一种方法

提出一种降低放大器三阶交调失真的方法。信号注入二极管电路引起失真，然后经过主放大器，又将一个新的频率分量注入到二极管和主放大器中，最终抵消掉部分三阶交调分量，使放大器线性化。不同于其他方法的是，这种方法不需要可变增益放大器、可变衰减器等复杂的电路器件。最后给出了双频激励测试的结果，结果表明此方法运用于工作在850MHz的MESFET放大器中，使放大器的三阶交调分量降低了26dBm。     

Improvement of Intermodulation Distortion Asymmetry Characteristics With Wideband Microwave Signals in High Power Amplifiers

This paper presents the improvement techniques of intermodulation-distortion asymmetries with wide carrier-spacing signals in L/S-band high power amplifiers. We proposed a novel circuit technique to directly connect LC series resonant circuits to the gate and drain electrodes of the transistor die in a package for baseband terminations with a wide frequency range. By applying this circuit technique to a 28-V operation 200-W GaAs heterojunction field-effect transistor (HJFET) amplifier, the third-order intermodulation distortion (IMD3) asymmetries were improved even if the two-tone carrier spacing (Deltaf) exceeds 100 MHz. In addition, we analyzed the IMD3 asymmetries of a Doherty amplifier through the IMD3 vector combination of the main and peak amplifiers. A newly developed 28-V operation 200-W GaAs HJFET Doherty amplifier with source and load baseband terminations also delivered flat IMD3 characteristics against the Deltaf over 50 MHz.     

Analog AGC Circuitry for a CMOS WLAN Receiver

The IEEE 802.11a standard uses orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) to allow high data rates in multipath WLAN environments. The high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) of OFDM signals, along with stringent settling-time constraints, make conventional closed-loop automatic gain control (AGC) schemes impractical for WLAN receivers. In a direct conversion receiver, AGC and channel-select filtering are performed by analog baseband circuitry. A baseband signal processor using a new open-loop analog gain-control algorithm for OFDM is described. The new AGC algorithm uses switched coarse gain-setting steps followed by an analog open-loop fine gain-setting step to set the final gain of variable gain amplifiers (VGAs). The AGC was implemented in a 0.18-$muhbox m$CMOS process using newly designed circuits including linear VGAs, RMS detectors, and current-mode computation circuitry. Simulation and measurement results verify that the new AGC circuit converges with gain error less than 1dB to the desired level within 5.6$muhbox s$.     

Amplifier linearization using simultaneous harmonic and basebandinjection

A novel linearization scheme utilizing injection of distortion signal at the input of amplifier is described. Harmonic and baseband signal generated by predistortion circuits is fed to the input of the main amplifier and by controlling the power level of the harmonic and baseband signal properly, mixing products can be made to cancel out with the FET inherent distortion signals. Unlike many other techniques, no precise phase adjustment is required for the RF signal path. For verification, the two-tone performance of a constructed linearized amplifier is measured and a reduction of the third-order IMD power level of about 27 dB is observed     

Amplifier linearization using compact microstrip resonant cell-theory and experiment

This paper presents a novel technique for reducing the intermodulation distortions (IMDs) in power amplifiers. In this method, both second- and third-harmonic components generated by the transistor are reflected back simultaneously by the compact microstrip resonant cell (CMRC) at the input port with proper phases to mix with the fundamental signal for the reduction of IMDs. A rigorous mathematical analysis on the effectiveness of multiharmonic reflections has been formulated and derived using the Volterra series. Moreover, the delay mismatch factor of the proposed method is analytically studied and the result shows that a better tolerance to the delay error can be achieved by using CMRC circuitry. Standard two-tone test measurements reveal 32- and 22-dB reductions for the third-order IMD and fifth-order IMD, respectively, without affecting the fundamental signal at 2.45 GHz. Meanwhile, the proposed approach gives a peak power added efficiency of 53% with 11.5 dB transducer gain and 15 dBm output power for a single-stage SiGe bipolar junction transistor. The adjacent channel power ratio (ACPR) is -55dBc for a data rate of 384-kb/s quadrature phase shift keyed modulated signal with 2-MHz spanning bandwidth, and this ACPR is maintained for a broad range of output power level.     

Intermodulation distortion in a multiple-quantum-well semiconductor optical amplifier

The measurement of intermodulation distortion (IMD) induced by carrier-density modulation in a multiple-quantum-well (MQW) semiconductor amplifier is reported. The results show that MQW amplifiers have 15 dB less IMD than conventional buried-heterostructure semiconductor amplifiers. The IMD is dependent on the output power of the amplifiers, which confirms that the carrier-density modulation is the dominant nonlinear mechanism in MQW amplifiers. In addition, the results show that, unlike conventional buried-heterostructure amplifiers, MQW amplifiers have at least two time constants (200-250 ps and <10 ps) for the gain recovery process.<>     

Analysis of envelope signal injection for improvement of RF amplifier intermodulation distortion

Adaptive bias techniques based on envelope signal power detection have been proposed for linearity enhancement and dc current reduction in RF amplifiers. Experimental results show an improvement in amplifier linearity, although asymmetric intermodulation distortion (IMD) was observed. This work rigorously studies the effects of the envelope signal injection on amplifier distortion using the Volterra series formulations. The results intuitively explain the spectral regrowth asymmetry, and point to a design technique in which third-order IMD can be optimally cancelled. The theory was verified through comparison to measurement and simulation results.     

A single-chip multimode receiver for GSM900, DCS1800, PCS1900, and WCDMA

A single-chip, multimode receiver for GSM900, DCS1800, PCS1900, and UTRA/FDD WCDMA is introduced in this paper. The receiver operates at four different radio frequencies with two different baseband bandwidths. The presented chip uses a direct-conversion architecture and consists of a low-noise amplifier (LNA), downconversion mixers with on-chip local-oscillator I/Q generation, channel selection filters, and programmable gain amplifiers. In spite of four receive bands, only four on-chip inductors are used in the single-ended LNA. The repeatable receiver second-order input intercept point (IIP2) of over +42 dBm is achieved with mixer linearization circuitry together with a baseband circuitry having approximately +100-dBV out-of-band IIP2. The noise figure of the SiGe BiCMOS receiver is less than 4.8 dB in all GSM modes, and 3.5 dB in WCDMA. The power consumption from a 2.7-V supply in all GSM modes and in WCDMA mode is 42 and 50 mW, respectively. The silicon area is 9.8 mm/sup 2/ including the bonding pads.     

Receiver Front-End Circuits for Future Generations of Wireless Communications

In this paper, new receiver concepts and CMOS circuits for future wireless communications applications are introduced. The concepts derived are applied to a few classes of wireless communications standards that are broad-band at radio frequencies and/or require a broad-band baseband circuitry. Multimode multiband operation and adaptivity as key requirements for future generation receivers are highlighted throughout the paper. The tradeoffs between power consumption, noise figure and linearity performance of low-noise amplifiers, mixers, and intermediate frequency filters are considered too.     

Novel difference-frequency dual-signal injection method for CMOS mixer linearization

This paper presents the application of dual-signal injection technique to the reduction of intermodulation distortion (IMD) level in double-balanced mixer. In this method, "difference-frequency" signal components are optimally fed to the mixer through the biasing circuitry for IMD cancellation. For comparison purposes, the measured performance of a 900-MHz complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) mixer based upon both single and dual injection approaches is shown.     

Analog IC-Achievable Lineariser for Power Amplifiers Based on Adaptive Feedforward

A compensation technique for the amplitude and phase imbalances of a feedforward lineariser using the LMS algorithm, implemented entirely in the analog domain, is presented. The lineariser is suited to RF power amplifiers, and maybe entirely developed with analog IC technologies. From simulated two-tone tests, the circuit leads to an intermodulation (IMD) reduction superior to 35 dB for a 64-QAM signal, being cheaper and competitive in performance with usual DSP-based adaptation circuits. Different implementations are evaluated, and the application of the circuit to RF power amplifiers in the DVB-T and in the LMDS frequency bands is considered.     

A vector intermodulation analyzer applied to behavioral modeling of nonlinear amplifiers with memory

A large signal vector intermodulation network analyzer with a dynamic range of 90 dB and phase resolution of better than 2/spl deg/ is reported. The analyzer is used in conjunction with a multislice behavioral model to characterize memory effects in three different RF power amplifiers: an MOSFET instrumentation amplifier, a multistage GaAs/silicon-based broadband microwave integrated-circuit amplifier, and an SiGe HBT monolithic-microwave integrated-circuit amplifier. The multislice behavioral model architecture builds on conventional single-tone AM-AM and AM-PM modeling extended to capture long-term memory effects that are characterized by asymmetric intermodulation distortion (IMD). Phase asymmetries of upper and lower IMD are captured. A systematic procedure for extracting the model is presented.     

Direct-conversion bandpass sigma-delta modulator

A bandpass sigma-delta modulation analogue-to-digital (A/D) converter that uses direct conversion to baseband with in phase and quadrature paths within the feedback loop is described. The bandpass input signal is processed with continuous-time circuitry and the I/Q baseband signals are processed with switched-capacitor circuits. Experimental and simulation results indicate that the passband centre frequency can be maximised while suppressing the effects of I/Q mismatches     

Second-order statistical properties of nonlinearly distorted phase-shift keyed (PSK) signals

In wireless communication systems operation of the amplifiers near saturation is often required for efficiency reasons, resulting in a nonlinearly distorted signal at the amplifier output. A popular model for the corresponding baseband equivalent nonlinear channel is a truncated Volterra series. By exploiting the bandpass nature of the channel and the statistical properties of phase-shift keyed signals, we show that the different terms in the Volterra series are white and uncorrelated with each other. This result is useful when considering blind equalization approaches for this class of systems.     

An Approximation of Volterra Series Using Delay Envelopes, Applied to Digital Predistortion of RF Power Amplifiers With Memory Effects

In this letter, a new model for digital predistortion (DPD) of radio frequency power amplifiers for wide-band applications is proposed. The model is based on a spline approximation of Volterra series by considering second-order cross-terms. The advantage of the spline cross-term model is a reduction in the number of model parameters. We further reduce the model order by operating on delayed envelope samples, rather than the complex baseband samples. A block of wide-band code-division multiple access signal is sent through a 90 W class-AB power amplifier, based on the freescale LDMOS output device, and the input/output baseband samples were used to identify the DPD parameters.     

A wide dynamic range analog predistortion-type linearizer using self-cancellation scheme

A new radio frequency linearized power amplifier (LPA) system for wideband-code-division-multiple-access (WCDMA) application is demonstrated. The main amplifier is a parallel combination of drive amplifiers, and the same type of drive amplifier is also used to generate the predistortion signal. Self-cancellation of the intermodulation-distortion (IMD) components is obtained by the generic identity between the nonlinear characteristics of the main amplifier and the predistortion signal, both of which are originated from the same type of devices. Such self-cancellation scheme exhibits the improvement of 13 dB in the adjacent channel leakage ratio (ACLR) for WCDMA signal excitation.     

Analysis of the suppression of nonlinear distortions in amplifiers using the envelope signal

The suppression of the nonlinear distortions in amplifier using the effect of the envelope signal of the amplified HF oscillations on the amplifier parameters is analyzed. A slow (on the time scale of the HF oscillations) variation in the parameters gives rise to additional frequency components of oscillations that compensate for the nonlinear distortions of the original signal. Several variants to employ the compensating signal using the feedback circuits in the transistor amplifiers and variations in the electron-beam current in TWT in the absence of such circuits are considered. The suppression of the nonlinear intermodulation distortions (IMDs) of the test two-frequency signal is studied for the above variants and the suppression of the third-order IMD by 6–19 dB corresponds to the known experimental data on the microwave transistor amplifier. The generalization of the quasi-stationary method for the analysis of the nonlinear transformation of signals allows the analysis of the amplification and suppression of IMD for more complicated multifrequency signals that are used in radio systems.     

An analog compensation method for asymmetric IMD characteristics of power amplifier

The modulation frequency affects the asymmetric intermodulation distortion (IMD) products of a RF power amplifier. This effect reduces IMD cancellation performance of power amplifiers in connection with predistortion linearization. A phase extraction method to determine phase difference between upper and lower third-order IMD products and a phase compensation circuit using an envelope injection technique is proposed. The experimental results demonstrate a significant improvement in the third-order IMD cancellation performance.     

基于MATLAB的RF功率放大器互调失真仿真分析

应用Matlab仿真平台对RF功率放大器的互调失真(inter-modulation—IMD)进行了分析。结果表明:在输入信号峰值或峰值功率不变时,可以用输入为两个或三个正弦信号情况下的互调失真指标来估计输入为宽频带、高密度信号情况下的互调失真指标;通过降低输入功放信号的峰值功率可以降低互调失真分量的相对幅度。