Power Amplifiers for High Peak-to-Average-Ratio Signals — Architectures and Tradeoffs of Efficiency, Linearity and Bandwidth

Transmission of emerging signals with complex constellations, wide bandwidths and high PAPR requires attention to linearity and high backoff efficiency. This presentation discusses linearity requirements and associated AM-AM, AM-PM and memory issues in wideband power amplifiers. It then reviews architectures for backoff efficiency improvement. The need for predistortion — analog and/or digital — is highlighted. Challenges related to optimizing performance over ever-increasing bandwidths are presented.