Digital control of RF power amplifiers for next-generation wireless communications

Future generations of wireless communications are expected to place increasing burdens on the efficiency and linearity of power amplifiers, due to the use of more complex waveforms and OFDM. This has implications for the design of transmitters in portable/mobile devices as well as base stations and access points. Although semiconductor device technology has made rapid progress in fundamental power amplifier transistor performance, the use of digital signal processing techniques to optimize the linearity and efficiency provides enormous potential for further improvement (especially on the handset side). This paper summarizes the digital techniques that can be employed to improve the performance of wireless power amplifiers.