Power consumption trade-off between power amplifier OBO, DPD, and clipping and filtering

This paper investigates the trade-off between power amplifier (PA) nonlinearity, output power backoff (OBO), digital predistortion (DPD), and clipping and filtering (CF) in terms of energy consumption. The energy efficiency of a PA depends on the OBO of the signal and usually increases as the OBO decreases. Peak to average power ratio (PAPR) reduction methods like CF and PA linearization algorithms like DPD methods allow the use of a smaller OBO. Those algorithms show best results when used together. By studying the trade-off between the power consumed in the CF and DPD circuits versus having a larger OBO for a target bit-error rate (BER), we show that below a certain PA output power the power consumption is not reduced by decreasing the OBO. We also show that the increase in distortion noise when using DPD and CF might defeat the purpose of their use in terms of power consumption. Given the trend toward smaller cells like femtocells, requiring less output power, CF and DPD may not be required at all, leading to a simpler and power saving transmitter design.