Design of a Low-Cost Low-Profile Energy Efficient 64-QAM Load Modulator

The design of a 64-QAM I/Q modulator based on load modulation is presented. The modulator is designed to operate at 3 GHz. In any standard M-QAM modulation, the RF circuitry of the voltage source generates currents on the antenna corresponding to the transmitted signals. With load modulation, the waveforms of the M-QAM constellation points are generated by changing the internal parameters of the load modulator connected to the antenna. At the same time, the voltage source is kept constant. Thus, the power amplifier amplifies a constant signal all the time and does not need to operate in the back-off region. An optimization algorithm is developed to find the design parameters of the load modulator circuit. The design parameters obtained from the algorithm have been used in the advanced design system (ADS) software to design, simulate, and fully characterize the RF load modulator circuit. The hardware prototype of the load modulator circuit is realized using microstrip lines and a diode-based switching circuit. The measurements show that the load modulator can generate outputs on the
$S_{21}$
-parameter complex plane matched to the 64-QAM constellation diagram. A microcontroller is programmed to serve the required bias voltages to the p-i-n diodes in the load modulator based on a predetermined lookup table (LUT). The proposed architecture does not require a digital-to-analog converter (DAC). A credible agreement between the simulation results and measurements is obtained.