Linearization of RF Power Amplifiers Using Adaptive Kalman Filtering Algorithm

International audienceIn this paper, a new linearization algorithm of Power Amplifier, based on Kalman filtering theory is proposed for obtaining fast convergence of the adaptive digital predistortion. The proposed method uses the real-time digital processing of baseband signals to compensate the nonlinearities and memory effects in radio-frequency Power Amplifier. To reduce the complexity of computing in classical Kalman Filtering, a sliding time-window has been inserted which combines off-line measurement and on-line parameter estimation with high sampling time to track the changes in the PA characteristics. We evaluated the performance of the proposed linearization scheme through simulation and experiments. Using digital signal processing, experimental results with commercial power amplifier are presented for multicarrier signals to demonstrate the effectiveness of this new approach

Kalman filtering algorithm for on-line memory polynomial predistortion

International audienc

On-line memory polynomial predistortion based on the adapted kalman filtering algorithm

International audienceA new adaptive technique for digital predistortion is presented. The proposed method uses the real-time digital processing of baseband signals to compensate the nonlinearities and memory effects in radio-frequency power amplifier. Kalman filtering algorithm with sliding time-window is adapted to track the changes in the PA characteristics. Simulation and measurement results, using digital signal processing, are presented for multicarrier signals to demonstrate the effectiveness of this new approach

Multiple lookup table predistortion for adaptive modulation

This paper presents a multiple LUT digital adaptive predistorter based on a Hammerstein model that uses the return channel to feed back information from the receiver, concretely the bit error rate (BER), in order to train and later adapt the specific LUT gains that permit always operating at the best back-off level. This new predistorter architecture is aimed at coping with modern communication standards that use adaptive modulation (such as IEEE 802.11 or IEEE 802.16) and therefore continuously searching the best linear amplification to maximize power efficiency at the time that a certain quality of service (BER) in reception is guaranteed. Simulations provided will show the advantages of this multi-LUT configuration, where in front of different channel conditions, linear and efficient amplification (minimum back-off) is achieved at the time that a certain level of BER at reception is ensured. Index terms – Lookup tables (LUT), digital adaptive predistortion, Hammerstein models, adaptive modulation systems, peak to average power ratio (PAPR), bit error rate (BER).Peer Reviewe

Multi look-up table FPGA implementation of an adaptive digital predistorter for linearizing RF power amplifiers with memory effects

This paper presents a hardware implementation of a digital predistorter (DPD) for linearizing RF power amplifiers (PAs) for wideband applications. The proposed predistortion linearizer is based on a nonlinear auto-regressive moving average (NARMA) structure, which can be derived from the NARMA PA behavioral model and then mapped into a set of scalable lookup tables (LUTs). The linearizer takes advantage of its recursive nature to relax the LUT count needed to compensate memory effects in PAs. Experimental support is provided by the implementation of the proposed NARMA DPD in a field-programmable gate-array device to linearize a 170-W peak power PA, validating the recursive DPD NARMA structure for W-CDMA signals and flexible transmission bandwidth scenarios. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first time that a recursive structure is experimentally validated for DPD purposes. In addition to the results on PA efficiency and linearity, this paper addresses many practical implementation issues related to the use of FPGA in DPD applications, giving an original insight on actual prototyping scenarios. Finally, this study discusses the possibility of further enhancing the overall efficiency by degrading the PA operation mode, provided that DPD may be unavoidable due to the impact of memory effects.Peer Reviewe

Automatic transmit power control for power efficient communications in UAS

Nowadays, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) have become one of the most popular tools that can be used in commercial, scientific, agricultural and military applications. As drones become faster, smaller and cheaper, with the ability to add payloads, the usage of the drone can be versatile. In most of the cases, unmanned aerials systems (UAS) are equipped with a wireless communication system to establish a link with the ground control station to transfer the control commands, video stream, and payload data. However, with the limited onboard calculation resources in the UAS, and the growing size and volume of the payload data, computational complex signal processing such as deep learning cannot be easily done on the drone. Hence, in many drone applications, the UAS is just a tool for capturing and storing data, and then the data is post-processed off-line in a more powerful computing device. The other solution is to stream payload data to the ground control station (GCS) and let the powerful computer on the ground station to handle these data in real-time. With the development of communication techniques such as orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transmissions, it is possible to increase the spectral efficiency over large bandwidths and consequently achieve high transmission rates. However, the drone and the communication system are usually being designed separately, which means that regardless of the situation of the drone, the communication system is working independently to provide the data link. Consequently, by taking into account the position of the drone, the communication system has some room to optimize the link budget efficiency. In this master thesis, a power-efficient wireless communication downlink for UAS has been designed. It is achieved by developing an automatic transmit power control system and a custom OFDM communication system. The work has been divided into three parts: research of the drone communication system, an optimized communication system design and finally, FPGA implementation. In the first part, an overview on commercial drone communication schemes is presented and discussed. The advantages and disadvantages shown are the source of inspiration for improvement. With these ideas, an optimized scheme is presented. In the second part, an automatic transmit power control system for UAV wireless communication and a power-efficient OFDM downlink scheme are proposed. The automatic transmit power control system can estimate the required power level by the relative position between the drone and the GCS and then inform the system to adjust the power amplifier (PA) gain and power supply settings. To obtain high power efficiency for different output power levels, a searching strategy has been applied to the PA testbed to find out the best voltage supply and gain configurations. Besides, the OFDM signal generation developed in Python can encode data bytes to the baseband signal for testing purpose. Digital predistortion (DPD) linearization has been included in the transmitter’s design to guarantee the signal linearity. In the third part, two core algorithms: IFFT and LUT-based DPD, have been implemented in the FPGA platform to meet the real-time and high-speed I/O requirements. By using the high-level synthesis design process provided by Xilinx Corp, the algorithms are implemented as reusable IP blocks. The conclusion of the project is given in the end, including the summary of the proposed drone communication system and envisioning possible future lines of research

Robust Digital Signal Recovery for LEO Satellite Communications Subject to High SNR Variation and Transmitter Memory Effects

This paper proposes a robust digital signal recovery (DSR) technique to tackle the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) variation and transmitter memory effects for broadband power efficient down-link in next-generation low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellations. The robustness against low SNR is achieved by concurrently integrating magnitude normalization and noise feature filtering using a filtering block built with one batch normalization (BN) layer and two bidirectional long short-term memory (BiLSTM) layers. Moreover, unlike existing deep neural network-based DSR techniques (DNN-DSR), which failed to effectively take into account the memory effects of radio-frequency power amplifiers (RF-PAs) in the model design, the proposed BiLSTM-DSR technique can extracts the sequential characteristics of the adjacent in-phase (I) and quadrature (Q) samples, and hence can obtain superior memory effects compensation compared with the DNN-DSR technique. Experimental validation results of the proposed BiLSTM-DSR with a 100 MHz bandwidth OFDM signal demonstrate an excellent performance of 11.83 dB and 9.4% improvement for adjacent channel power ratio (ACPR) and error vector magnitude (EVM), respectively. BiLSTM-DSR also outperforms the existing DNN-DSR technique in terms of the ACPR and EVM by 2.4 dB and 0.9%, which provides a promising solution for developing deep learning-assisted receivers for high-throughput LEO satellite networks

Outils d'analyse, de modélisation et de commande pour les radiocommunications Application aux amplificateurs de puissance

L'évolution croissante des télécommunications résulte de la combinaison de plusieurs facteurs comme les progrès de l'électronique, de la micro-électronique, de la radiofréquence mais aussi des avancées des techniques de communications numériques. Dans ce contexte, les études s'orientent de plus en plus vers l'amélioration de la couverture et de la qualité de service offertes aux usagers. C'est dans ce contexte que s'inscrivent les travaux exposés dans le cadre de cette Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches. Les problématiques soulevées concernent : - la connaissance et la maîtrise du comportement des composants en présence de signaux large bande, multiporteuses, - l'amélioration de la qualité des transmissions en tenant compte des aspects énergétiques, - la reconfigurabilité et l'adaptation des nouveaux systèmes à la multiplication des normes et des standards de communications. Pour chaque problématique, nous avons proposé des solutions théoriques et pratiques avec comme fil conducteur l'utilisation et la mise en \oe uvre d'outils issus de l'Automatique comme l'estimation paramétrique, la commande et la linéarisation, l'optimisation, etc. Concernant la modélisation des fonctions électroniques RF, je présente mes travaux concernant la prise en compte des effets statiques et dynamiques en temps continu et discret. Pour les circuits hautes fréquences qui se caractérisent par des constantes de temps avec des ordres de grandeurs divers, nous avons montré qu'il est important d'envisager la modélisation selon l'application visée et en déployant des outils d'estimation paramétrique adaptés. Des problématiques telles que la normalisation de l'espace paramétrique, l'initialisation, la convergence sont étudiées pour répondre aux caractéristiques des systèmes de radiocommunications.Dans le chapitre consacré à l'amélioration de la linéarité et du rendement, nous avons présenté des techniques de correction des imperfections des amplificateurs de puissances ainsi que des méthodes de traitement du signal qui permettent de réduire leurs impacts sur la transmission. Concernant la linéarisation, nous avons commencé par une comparaison d'une technique Feedback et d'un linéariseur à base d'une prédistorsion polynomiale sans mémoire. Cette étude a mis en évidence l'intérêt d'adjoindre de la mémoire sous forme de retards dans le linéariseur. Les fortes fluctuations des signaux multiporteuses, mesurées par le PAPR pour Peak-to-Average Power Ratio, contribuent aussi à dégrader le bilan énergétique de l'émetteur. La majorité des travaux sur la réduction du PAPR se limite à l'étude des performances en termes de gain de réduction, sans aborder la qualité de transmission en présence d'imperfections réalistes des éléments non-linéaires. C'est dans ce contexte que nous avons analysé cette problématique pour un système MIMO-OFDM en boucle fermée avec prise en compte du canal, des non-linéarités, des effets mémoires et des critères visuels permettant d'évaluer la qualité des transmissions de données multimédias.Le développement d'architectures entièrement numérique, reconfigurables est traité en dernière partie de ce cette HDR. Pour cette large thématique, nous proposons des améliorations pour des coefficients des modulateurs afin d'obtenir une fonction de transfert du bruit respectant un gabarit fréquentiel donné. La correction des erreurs de calcul dus aux coefficients du type 1/$2^L$. Cette correction est basée sur la ré-injection de l'erreur au sein de la boucle directe à travers un filtre numérique

Design and Linearization of Energy Efficiency Power Amplifier in Nonlinear OFDM Transmitter for LTE-5G Applications. Simulation and measurements of energy efficiency power amplifier in the presence of nonlinear OFDM transmitter system and digital predistortion based on Hammerstein-Wiener method

This research work has made an effort to understand a novel line of radio frequency power amplifiers (RFPAs) that address initiatives for efficiency enhancement and linearity compensation to harmonize the fifth generation (5G) campaign. The objective is to enhance the performance of an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing-long term evolution (OFDM-LTE) transmitter by reducing the nonlinear distortion of the RFPA. The first part of this work explores the design and implementation of 15.5 W class AB RF power amplifier, adopting a balanced technique to stimulate efficiency enhancement and redeeming exhibition of excessive power in the transmitter. Consequently, this work goes beyond improving efficiency over a linear RF power amplifier design; in which a comprehensive investigation on the fundamental and harmonic components of class F RF power amplifier using a load-pull approach to realise an optimum load impedance and the matching network is presented. The frequency bandwidth for both amplifiers was allocated to operate in the 2.620-2.690 GHz of mobile LTE applications. The second part explores the development of the behavioural model for the class AB power amplifier. A particular novel, Hammerstein-Wiener based model is proposed to describe the dynamic nonlinear behaviour of the power amplifier. The RF power amplifier nonlinear distortion is approximated using a new linear parameter approximation approach. The first and second-order Hammerstein-Wiener using the Normalised Least Mean Square Error (NLMSE) algorithm is used with the aim of easing the complexity of filtering process during linear memory cancellation. Moreover, an enhanced adaptive Wiener model is proposed to explore the nonlinear memory effect in the system. The proposed approach is able to balance between convergence speed and high-level accuracy when compared with behavioural modelling algorithms that are more complex in computation. Finally, the adaptive predistorter technique is implemented and verified in the OFDM transceiver test-bed. The results were compared against the computed one from MATLAB simulation for OFDM and 5G modulation transmitters. The results have confirmed the reliability of the model and the effectiveness of the proposed predistorter.Fundacão para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, Portugal, under European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme ... grant agreement H2020-MSCA-ITN- 2016 SECRET-722424 I also acknowledge the role of the National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA) Sokoto State Government Petroleum Technology Trust Fund (PTDF