A Three-State Signal Coding Scheme for High Efficiency Class-S Amplifiers

A three-state signal coding scheme is proposed for driving Class-S amplifiers with higher efficiency than conventional techniques. The approach is formulated in the framework of polar modulation, where the magnitude is controlled by a timing code that specifies positive and negative rectangular pulses as well as a third zero state, and the phase is varied by modulating the clock delay. In particular, high efficiency is attained when the active pulse widths are a half-cycle of the carrier frequency, and the zero-state is formed by skipping pulses. In this case, full-amplitude modulation has the same efficiency as a Class-D amplifier, and is only slightly degraded as the amplitude is decreased. In addition, the technique operates at only $2{times}$ sampling and is very simple to implement. Spectral analysis is performed for baseband signals consisting of single tones, 2-tone suppressed-carrier, and bandlimited random noise. The latter case emulates real communication signals and is shown to exhibit good spectral characteristics and low error-vector magnitude in the time domain. An important application of this technique is in all-digital, power-efficient power amplifiers for cellular base stations and handsets.