A systemic approach to combined linearization and efficiency improvement for power amplifiers

It is shown that a systemic approach to improving the efficiency of power amplifiers permits close to 1 dB of additional improvement in maximal output power. This technique essentially consists of optimizing the transmit pulse shaping filter combined with an advanced adaptive predistortion technique using post-distortion identification and an optimized receive filter. At the core of the optimization criteria is the peak modulated signal power which is minimized by appropriate filtering under spectrum occupancy and inter-symbol interference constraints. The systemic scheme is validated with a mixed signal platform and hardware measurements for a commercially available power amplifier.