A novel power amplifier behavioral model for improving the linearity-efficiency tradeoff

This paper focuses on a novel power amplifier (PA) semi-physical behavioral model (BM) to study the linearity-efficiency trade-off in modern wireless transmitter systems. While the behavioral models known in the literature mainly focus on the precise description of the PA nonlinearity in terms of amplitude-modulation-to-amplitude-modulation (AM-AM) and amplitude-modulation-to-phase-modulation (AM-PM) distortions, the model introduced here, also predicts the DC current flowing from the power supply to the PA. This allows to optimize the battery current while keeping the out-of-channel interference within specification limits. In a case study, the DC current and the amplitude distortions of a PA, designed for IEEE 802.11b/g/n applications are predicted with a normalized mean square error (NMSE) of -39.92 dB and -47.07 dB, respectively.