Signal Distortion Decreasing in Envelope Tracking Power Amplifiers

Abstract

When amplifying signals with a high peak to average power ratio, the efficiency of linear radio frequency (RF) power amplifiers (PA) is reduced to about 30%. This flaw can be noticeably corrected by using envelope tracking technology. However, using switched mode PAs of envelope signal (ES) is accompanied by the emergence of nonlinear distortions, which can appear as undesirable components in the RF PA signal spectrum. One of the ways to reduce the negative influence of the switched mode is to use ES PA of multicell structure. The paper covers the issues of the ES PA number of cells influence on its efficiency and output signal distortion, as well as its influence on the efficiency and output signal distortion of the RF PA. It is shown that rational choice of the number of cells allows to increase the efficiency of ES PA from 94 through 98% and to reduce the level of intermodulation components in the envelope signal spectrum by 20 … 25 dB.