Nonlinear amplifier effects in communications systems

This paper introduces a figure-of-merit to investigate tradeoffs between amplifiers and modulation waveforms in complex digital communications systems. Class-AB amplifiers are investigated with a variety of modulation schemes to better understand the relations between amplifier efficiency, amplifier distortion, signal in-band and adjacent channel interference, and power consumption. The goal is to better understand the tradeoffs needed to design low-energy communications systems.