Efficient Digital Predistortion Techniques For Power Amplifier Linearization

The importance of spectral efficiency in mobile communications often requires the use of non-constant-envelop linear digital modulation schemes. These modulation techniques carry signal information in both magnitude and phase, thus they must be linearly amplified to avoid nonlinear signal distortion which is not correctable in a typical receiver. A second difficulty in utilizing these modulation formats is that nonlinear amplification generates out-of-band power (spectral regrowth). Therefore, to achieve both high energy efficiency and spectral efficiency, some forms of linearization must be used to compensate for the nonlinearity of power amplifiers. One powerful technique that is amenable to monolithic integration is digital signal predistortion. Most predistorters try to achieve the inverse nonlinear characteristic of High Power Amplifier(HPA). In this thesis a new multi-stage digital adaptive signal predistorter is presented. The scheme is developed from the direct iterative method with low memory requirement proposed by Cavers [1] in combination with the multi-stage predistortion proposed by Stonick [2]. To make the predistorter more compact a very simple and fast method called the complementary method is proposed. The complementary method has prominent advantages over other digital predistorters in terms of stability of the algorithm, complexity of the algorithm and computational load.