Digital predistortion of amplitude varying phased array utilising over-the-air combining

In this paper, we propose a simple polynomial linearisation technique for nonlinear phased arrays including amplitude control. Due to the large number of antennas and thus power amplifiers in the array, it is inefficient to linearise each power amplifier individually. Therefore, it is demonstrated that the array can be linearised over-the-air using single polynomial. The simulations show that the linearisation is achieved by first linearising the higher driven PAs at the precompression region and then cancelling the compression by the heavily expanding lower driven PAs. The proposed approach offers an alternative way of re-thinking the concept of array linearisation over multiple PAs.