Spectral characteristics of a piecewise linear function in modeling power amplifier type nonlinearities

Nonlinear effects of a power amplifier (PA) in communications systems include spectral spreading, which causes adjacent channel interference. For predistorter design, it is crucial to employ a model that can sufficiently model the intermodulation distortion (IMD) caused by the PA. The order of IMD generated by a polynomial is determined by its highest order basis. For a piecewise linear function, the order of nonlinearity cannot be directly deduced from its basis function. This paper investigates how IMD is introduced by the simplicial canonical piecewise linear (SCPWL) function. We examine the operation imposed by the SCPWL basis function on sinusoid and multi-tone signal in the time domain and frequency domain. Our analysis results in expressions that can be used to predict the output spectrum of the SCPWL basis. The SCPWL basis operation involves spreading of the input signal spectrum. The output spectrum of each SCPWL basis includes infinite IMD components. The IMD order of the SCPWL model is not determined by the highest order basis. Instead, the number of SCPWL parameters, i.e., the number of linear affine segments that defines the function, determines how accurately it can model the IMD components.