Digital predistortion of envelope tracking amplifiers driven by slew-rate limited envelopes

Abstract

This paper presents a new Digital Predistorter (DPD) to compensate for nonlinear distortion that arises in Envelope Tracking (ET) Power Amplifiers (PAs) driven by slew-rate limited versions of the real signal's envelope. The slower version of the transmitted signal's envelope is used to cope with the slew-rate and bandwidth limitations of Envelope Amplifiers (EAs). Unfortunately, the use of slower versions of the real signal's envelope as the drain modulator generates a special kind of nonlinear memory effects. This paper shows experimental results that prove that is possible to compensate for these nonlinear memory effects that appear when exciting the supply of a RF linear PA with a slew-rate limited version of the envelope.

Peer Reviewed

Postprint (published version)