Nonlinear distortion cancellation using LINC transmitters in OFDM systems

The LInear amplification using Nonlinear Components (LINC) technique is a well-known power amplifier linearization method to reduce out-of-band interferences in a nonconstant envelope modulation system, such as Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) system, which is based on a very sensitive to nonlinear distortions OFDM modulation scheme. The major drawback of LINC transmitters is the inherited sensitivity to gain and phase imbalances between the two amplifier branches. In this paper, a novel full-digital base band method, which corrects any gain and phase imbalances in LINC transmitters mainly due to the un-matching of the two amplifier paths, is described. Amplifiers are characterized by a level-dependent complex gain using a memoryless model. The method uses adaptive signal processing techniques to obtain the optimal complex coefficients to correct gain and phase imbalances. Its main advantage is the ability to track the input signal variations and adapt to the changes of amplifier nonlinear characteristics. Other effects are included in the analysis such as quadrature modulator and demodulator impairments. A computer simulation has been carried out to verify method functionality.