Correcting non-linear power amplifier behaviour is much easier when designing with simulations
With pressure from modern broadband wireless standards such as LTE to minimise out-of-band emissions and to maintain power efficiency, it is more important than ever to ensure effective linear amplification from power amplifiers (PAs). Digital pre-distortion (DPD) is a fundamental building block used in wireless communication systems today for better efficiency. By reducing the distortion created by running power amplifiers in their non-linear regions, PAs can be made to be far more efficient.
Yet working with PAs is like walking through a house of mirrors; you see a distorted version of reality. However, PAs are actually worse than carnival mirrors, because levels of distortion change with power, temperature and age. One way of tackling this issue is through the use of digital pre-distortion, which can help to see clearly in this house of mirrors, while supplying greater flexibility and efficiency than hardware testing can offer.
Although correcting PAs with DPD is not a new idea, implementing an effective system is challenging. DPD systems run on DSPs, FPGAs, or ASICs. But using any of these target devices as a development platform makes for a slow and difficult development process. Each time you change the DPD algorithms, you have to change code, recompile/ synthesise, deploy to your target platform, and rerun tests. Rather than use this slow process, leading DPD companies are now using simulation-led design. To demonstrate how simulation-led design works, MathWorks created a DPD development process, used it to build demonstration DPD algorithms, and tested these demonstration algorithms on hardware.
You can read the rest of this article in the September issue of Electronic Specifier Design by clicking here.
Product Spotlight
APV1111GVY
Panasonic
Panasonic PhotoMOS® Photovoltaic MOSFET High-Power Drivers
| SKU: | |
|---|---|
| Stock: | 3490 |
| Cost: | $3.95 |
