Amplifier Architectures for Wireless Communication Systems

Ever-increasing demand in modern wireless communication systems leads researchers to focus on design challenges on one of the main components of RF transmitters and receivers, namely amplifiers. On the transmitter side, enhanced efficiency and broader bandwidth over single and multiple bands on power amplifiers will help to have superior performance in communication systems. On the other hand, for the receiver side, having low noise and high gain will be necessary to ensure good quality transmission over such systems. In light of these considerations, a unique approach in design methodologies are studied with low noise amplifiers (LNAs) for RF receivers and the Doherty technique is analyzed for efficiency enhancement for power amplifiers (PA) on the transmitters. This work can be outlined in two parts. In the first part, Low Noise RF amplifier designs with Bipolar Junction Transistor (BJT) are studied to achieve better performing LNAs for receivers. The aim is to obtain a low noise figure while optimizing the bandwidth and achieving a maximum available gain. There are two designs that are operating at different center frequencies and utilizing different transistors. The first design is a wideband low-noise amplifier operating at 2 GHz with a high power BJT. The proposed design uses only distributed elements to realize the input and output matching networks. Additionally, a passive DC bias network is used instead of an active DC bias network to avoid possible complications due to the lumped elements parasitic effects. The matching networks are designed based on the reflection coefficients that are derived based on the transistor’s available regions. The second design is a low voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR) amplifier with a low noise figure operating at 3 GHz. This design is following the same method as in the first design. Both these amplifiers are designed to operate in broadband applications and can be good candidates for base stations. The second part of this work focuses on the transmitter side of communication systems. For this part, Doherty Power Amplifier (DPA) is analyzed as an efficiency enhancement technique for PAs. A modified architecture is proposed to have wider bandwidth and higher efficiency. In the proposed design, the quarter-wave impedance inverter was eliminated. The input and the output of the main and peak amplifiers are matched to the load directly. Additionally, the input and output matching networks are realized only using distributed elements. The selected transistor for this design is a 10 W Gallium Nitride (GaN). The fabricated amplifier operates at the center frequency of 2 GHz and provides 40% fractional bandwidth, 54% of maximum power-added efficiency, and 12.5 dB or better small-signal gain. The design is showing promising results to be a good candidate for better-performing transmitters over the L- and S- band

Common-mode termination requirements in concurrent dual-band push-pull power amplifiers

Concurrent dual-band switch-mode power amplifiers require high common-mode impedance at their intermodulation frequencies. Baluns utilizing quarter-wave effects only present perfect open common-mode impedance at their design frequency. Attempting to use a balun in a dual-band push-pull power amplifier without taking the new dual-band requirements for common-mode impedance into account will result in efficiency loss. This thesis gives a complete derivation of the maximum theoretical drain efficiency in a class-D amplifier, and compares it with the dual-band case using an ideal balun at the output. This ideal balun is explored and the mechanics behind this efficiency loss is revealed. A solution is provided showing that the addition of some transmission lines can move impedance to those specific frequencies by rotation of the common-mode impedance without affecting the differential mode match

Impacto e compensação da largura de banda vídeo em amplificadores de potência de elevado rendimento

The aim of this work is to determine, quantify and model the performance degradation of wideband power amplifiers when subject to concurrent multiband excitation, with a particular focus on the average efficiency variation. The origins of this degradation are traced to two main transistor properties: the output baseband current generation by the nonlinear transconductance, and the input baseband current generation by the nonlinear gate-source capacitance variation. Each mechanism is analised separately, first by providing a qualitative and intuitive explanation of the processes that lead to the observed efficiency degradation, and then by deriving models that allow the prediction of the average efficiency dependence with the input signal bandwidth. The resulting knowledge was used to improve matching network design, in order to optimize baseband impedance terminations and prevent the efficiency degradation. The derived models were experimentally validated with several PA prototypes implemented with Gallium Nitride HEMT devices, using both conventional and optimized baseband impedance matching networks, achieving over 400MHz instantaneous bandwidth with uncompromised efficiency. The consolidation of the wideband degradation mechanisms described in this work are an important step for modelling and design of wideband, high-efficiency power amplifiers in current and future concurrent multi-band communication systems.O objetivo deste trabalho é determinar, quantificar e modelar a degradação do desempenho de amplificadores de banda-larga quando submetidos a excitação multi-banda concorrente, com particular ênfase na variação do rendimento energético. As origens desta degradação são devidas a duas das principais propriedades do transístor: a geração de corrente em banda-base na saída pela variação não-linear da transcondutância, e a geração de corrente de banda-base na entrada pela variação não-linear da capacidade interna porta-fonte. Cada um destes mecanismos é analisado isoladamente, primeiro por uma explicação qualitativa e intuitiva dos processos que levam à degradação de eficiência observada e, em seguida, através da derivação de modelos que permitem a previsão da degradação do rendimento médio em função da largura de banda do sinal de entrada. O conhecimento resultante foi utilizado para melhorar o desenvolvimento de malhas de adaptação, por forma a otimizar as terminações de impedância em banda-base e prevenir a degradação do rendimento. Os modelos desenvolvidos foram validados experimentalmente em vários amplificadores de potência implementados com transístores de tecnologia GaN HEMT, utilizando malhas de adaptação convencionais e otimizadas, onde se obteve 400MHz de largura de banda instantânea sem degradação do rendimento. A consolidação dos mecanismos de degradação descritos neste trabalho são um importante passo para a modelação e projeto de amplificadores de elevado rendimento e largura-debanda para os sistemas de comunicação multi-banda concorrente convencionais e do futuro.Programa Doutoral em Engenharia Eletrotécnic

ワイヤレス通信のための先進的な信号処理技術を用いた非線形補償法の研究

The inherit nonlinearity in analogue front-ends of transmitters and receivers have had primary impact on the overall performance of the wireless communication systems, as it gives arise of substantial distortion when transmitting and processing signals with such circuits. Therefore, the nonlinear compensation (linearization) techniques become essential to suppress the distortion to an acceptable extent in order to ensure sufficient low bit error rate. Furthermore, the increasing demands on higher data rate and ubiquitous interoperability between various multi-coverage protocols are two of the most important features of the contemporary communication system. The former demand pushes the communication system to use wider bandwidth and the latter one brings up severe coexistence problems. Having fully considered the problems raised above, the work in this Ph.D. thesis carries out extensive researches on the nonlinear compensations utilizing advanced digital signal processing techniques. The motivation behind this is to push more processing tasks to the digital domain, as it can potentially cut down the bill of materials (BOM) costs paid for the off-chip devices and reduce practical implementation difficulties. The work here is carried out using three approaches: numerical analysis & computer simulations; experimental tests using commercial instruments; actual implementation with FPGA. The primary contributions for this thesis are summarized as the following three points: 1) An adaptive digital predistortion (DPD) with fast convergence rate and low complexity for multi-carrier GSM system is presented. Albeit a legacy system, the GSM, however, has a very strict requirement on the out-of-band emission, thus it represents a much more difficult hurdle for DPD application. It is successfully implemented in an FPGA without using any other auxiliary processor. A simplified multiplier-free NLMS algorithm, especially suitable for FPGA implementation, for fast adapting the LUT is proposed. Many design methodologies and practical implementation issues are discussed in details. Experimental results have shown that the DPD performed robustly when it is involved in the multichannel transmitter. 2) The next generation system (5G) will unquestionably use wider bandwidth to support higher throughput, which poses stringent needs for using high-speed data converters. Herein the analog-to-digital converter (ADC) tends to be the most expensive single device in the whole transmitter/receiver systems. Therefore, conventional DPD utilizing high-speed ADC becomes unaffordable, especially for small base stations (micro, pico and femto). A digital predistortion technique utilizing spectral extrapolation is proposed in this thesis, wherein with band-limited feedback signal, the requirement on ADC speed can be significantly released. Experimental results have validated the feasibility of the proposed technique for coping with band-limited feedback signal. It has been shown that adequate linearization performance can be achieved even if the acquisition bandwidth is less than the original signal bandwidth. The experimental results obtained by using LTE-Advanced signal of 320 MHz bandwidth are quite satisfactory, and to the authors’ knowledge, this is the first high-performance wideband DPD ever been reported. 3) To address the predicament that mobile operators do not have enough contiguous usable bandwidth, carrier aggregation (CA) technique is developed and imported into 4G LTE-Advanced. This pushes the utilization of concurrent dual-band transmitter/receiver, which reduces the hardware expense by using a single front-end. Compensation techniques for the respective concurrent dual-band transmitter and receiver front-ends are proposed to combat the inter-band modulation distortion, and simultaneously reduce the distortion for the both lower-side band and upper-side band signals.電気通信大学201

Dual-band and switched-band highly efficient power amplifiers

The Power Amplifier is the most challenging module of a wireless network to design and it is the highest power consumer. Lots of research has been dedicated to design highly efficient and linear power amplifiers. The high demand for wireless communication systems creates the requirement for multiband transmitters and receivers. Providing high efficiency for power amplifiers in multiband applications is even more challenging. The work presented in this thesis is focused on designing high efficiency frequency adaptive power amplifiers. Frequency adaptive power amplifiers are categorized in three groups: broadband, multi-band and switched-band power amplifiers. Two main design methodologies of frequency adaptive power amplifiers are proposed in this thesis. They are dual-band and switched-band power amplifiers. The advantages and limitations of their output performances are evaluated. The main goals in this thesis are achieving high efficiency and required output power over all working bands and maintaining consistent performance over the bandwidth. In the dual-band power amplifiers, the distributed matching network is designed without any switches. Both of the switched-band Class-E power amplifiers have switched shunt capacitor values. The results demonstrate the tradeoffs between achieving consistent high performance in each band and introducing losses and complexity in the switching design

A survey on RF and microwave doherty power amplifier for mobile handset applications

This survey addresses the cutting-edge load modulation microwave and radio frequency power amplifiers for next-generation wireless communication standards. The basic operational principle of the Doherty amplifier and its defective behavior that has been originated by transistor characteristics will be presented. Moreover, advance design architectures for enhancing the Doherty power amplifier’s performance in terms of higher efficiency and wider bandwidth characteristics, as well as the compact design techniques of Doherty amplifier that meets the requirements of legacy 5G handset applications, will be discussed.Agencia Estatal de Investigación | Ref. TEC2017-88242-C3-2-RFundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia | Ref. UIDP/50008/201

Concurrent Dual-band Doherty Power Amplifiers for Carrier Aggregation

Carrier aggregation is the main feature of the Long Term Evolution advanced (LTE-A) standard to increase the spectral efficiency and communication bandwidth. It calls for wireless transmitters to be multi-band and multi-standard to meet the demands of various deployment scenarios. In addition, these transmit radios must efficiently amplify signals characterized with a high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR), which is caused by advanced modulation schemes. These two factors highlight the need for the multi-band Doherty power amplifier (DPA), which allows the transmitter remain in high efficiency at back-off power levels and maintain that high efficiency over multiple frequency bands. In this work, a novel output combining network is presented for the dual-band DPA design with extended fractional bandwidth for carrier aggregated signals. The proposed output combiner employs a modified Pi-shape network, which enables the absorption of output capacitances from both the main and peaking devices and eliminates the need for phase offset lines which are major sources of bandwidth limitation in the existing multiband DPAs. In addition to performing the impedance inversion, the proposed combiner incorporates the biasing feeds and presents small low-frequency impedances to both the main and peaking transistors. The inclusion of the bias feeds and small low low-frequency impedance feature improves the linearizability of the DPA when stimulated with concurrent dual-band modulated signals. Lastly, by using the gain contour at the back-off power level, the non-linear AM-AM response caused by the varying input capacitance of the main transistor is mitigated. The proposed dual-band output power combiner and the back-off gain contour technique were applied to design of a dual-band two-way Doherty PA using the commercialized 25W Gallium Nitride (GaN) transistor. Measurement of the two-way DPA shows a gain of 7.5- 9.5 dB at 2.05 - 2.3 GHz and 9 - 11 dB at 3.2 - 3.62 GHz. The efficiency at 6 dB back off is greater than 49% and 47% across the two frequency bands. The linearizability of the dual-band DPA is validated using various carrier aggregated signals. The PA exhibits linear behaviour when driven by up to 80 MHz intra-band carrier aggregated signal and 20 MHz concurrent dual-band signal after DPD. Additionally, carrier aggregated signals usually lead to a PAPR value between 8-10 dB. The efficiency of classic two-way DPA deteriorates when dealing with such signals. To cope with the efficiency deterioration, a three-way DPA was designed. Simulations of the three-way DPA show that the gain is greater than 9 dB within the two frequency bands, 2.05 - 2.32 GHz and 3.35 - 3.65 GHz. The efficiency at 10-dB back-off is greater than 40% in the two frequency bands

Advanced High Efficiency and Broadband Power Amplifiers Based on GaN HEMT for Wireless Applications

In advanced wireless communication systems, a rapid increase in the mobile data traffic and broad information bandwidth requirement can lead to the use of complex spectrally efficient modulation schemes such as orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM). Generally, complex non-constant envelope modulated signals have very high peak-to-average ratios (PAPR). Doherty Power Amplifier (DPA) is the most commonly used power amplifier (PA) architecture for meeting high efficiency requirement in advanced communication systems, in the presence of high PAPR signals. However, limited bandwidth of the conventional DPA is often identified as a bottleneck for widespread deployment in base-station application for multi-standard communication signals. The research in this thesis focuses on the development of new designs to overcome the bandwidth limitations of a conventional PA. In particular, the bandwidth limitation factors of a conventional DPA architecture are studied. Moreover, a novel design technique is proposed for DPA’s bandwidth extension. In the first PA design, limited bandwidth and linearity problems are addressed simultaneously. For this purpose, a new Class-AB PA with extended bandwidth and improved linearity is presented for LTE 5 W pico-cell base-station over a frequency range of 1.9–2.5 GHz. A two-tone load/source-pull and bias point optimization techniques are used to extract the sweet spots for optimum efficiency and linearity from the 6 W Cree GaN HEMT device for the whole frequency band. The realized prototype presented saturated PAE higher than 60%, a power gain of 13 dB and an average output power of 36.5 dBm over the desired bandwidth. The proposed PA is also characterized by QAM-256 and LTE input communication signals for linearity characterization. Measured ACPRs are lower than -40 dBc for an input power of 17 dBm. The documented results indicate that the proposed Class-AB architecture is suitable for pico-cell base-station application. In the second PA design, an inherent bandwidth limitation of Class-F power amplifier forced by the improper load harmonics terminations at multiple harmonics is investigated and analyzed. It is demonstrated that the impedance tuning of the second and third harmonics at the drain terminal of a transistor is crucial to achieve a broadband performance. The effect of harmonics terminations on power amplifier’s bandwidth up to fourth harmonics is investigated. The implemented broadband Class-F PA achieved maximum saturated drain efficiency 60-77%, and 10 W output power throughout (1.1-2.1 GHz) band. The simulated and measured results verify that the presented Class-F PA is suitable for a high-efficiency system application in wireless communications over a wide range of frequencies. In the third PA design, a single- and dual-input DPA for LTE application in the 3.5 GHz frequency band are presented and compared. The main goal of this study is to improve the performance of gallium–nitride (GaN) Doherty transmitters over a wide bandwidth in the 3.5 GHz frequency band. For this purpose, the linearity-efficiency trade-off for the two proposed architectures is discussed in detail. Simulated results demonstrate that the single- and dual-input DPA exhibited a peak drain efficiency (DE) of 72.4% and 77%, respectively. Both the circuits showed saturated output power more than 42.9 dBm throughout the designed band. Saturated efficiency, gain and bandwidth of dual-input DPA are higher than that of the single-input DPA. On the other side, dual-input DPA linearity is worse as compared to the single-input DPA. In the last PA design, a novel design methodology for ultra-wide band DPA is presented. The bandwidth limitation factors of the conventional Doherty amplifier are discussed on the ground of broadband matching with impedance variation. To extend the DPA bandwidth, three different methods are used such as post-matching, low impedance transformation ratio and the optimization of offset line for wide bandwidth in the proposed design. The proposed Doherty power amplifier was designed and realized based on two 10 W GaN HEMT devices from Cree Inc. The measured results exhibited 42-57% of efficiency at the 6-dB back-off and saturated output power ranges from 41.5 to 43.1 dBm in the frequency range of 1.15 to 2.35 GHz (68.5% fractional bandwidth). Moreover, less than -25 dBc ACPRs are measured at 42 dBm peak output power throughout the designed band. In a nutshell, all power amplifiers presented in this thesis are suitable for wideband operation and their performances are satisfying the required operational standard. Therefore, this thesis has a significant contribution in the domain of high efficiency and broadband power amplifiers

Design of dual-band matching network for highly efficient power amplifier

In the last decades wireless communications has been growing tremendously and given that the trend will most likely continue at a cumulative pace it is imperative that in the future, the transceivers designed need to operate at a near ideal energy efficiency on new frequency bands demanded by the 5G standard. Since transmitters are the corner stone of any wireless communication systems and that power amplifier (PA) is a high power consuming device within it. It is evident that the design of a highly efficient PA might tackle the significant portion of power loss within RF and microwave systems. The design of PA proposed in this work is aimed at dual band frequencies based on the LTE standards of LTE 42 and LTE 43 having range of 3.4 GHz to 3.6 GHz and 3.6 GHz to 3.8 GHz respectively. The design of a PA begins at characterizing the transistor employed then followed by conjugate matching of the input aimed at the gate. In the design for a highly efficient power amplifier, the design of the OMN plays a pivotal role. This is usually achieved by employing load pull techniques aimed at the drain to find the optimum impedance requirement at desired frequency. Then by employing band-pass filters aimed only to allow the two LTE bands to pass through will cause all the other harmonic frequencies suppression. Having an ideal efficiency of 100% and their simplistic design over other PA classes makes the Class E amplifier a viable choice. Although theoretically Class E amplifier have an ideal efficiency, we expect by achieving 60% to 80% efficiency will be an acceptable target since in practice the efficiency largely depends on the type of transistor being implemented in the PA system

Recent Developments of Dual-Band Doherty Power Amplifiers for Upcoming Mobile Communications Systems

Power amplifiers in modern and future communications should be able to handle different modulation standards at different frequency bands, and in addition, to be compatible with the previous generations. This paper reviews the recent design techniques that have been used to operate dual-band amplifiers and in particular the Doherty amplifiers. Special attention is focused on the design methodologies used for power splitters, phase compensation networks, impedance inverter networks and impedance transformer networks of such power amplifier. The most important materials of the dual-band Doherty amplifier are highlighted and surveyed. The main problems and challenges covering dual-band design concepts are presented and discussed. In addition, improvement techniques to enhance such operations are also exploited. The study shows that the transistor parasitic has a great impact in the design of a dual-band amplifier, and reduction of the transforming ratio of the inverter simplifies the dual-band design. The offset line can be functionally replaced by a Π-network in dual-band design rather than T-network