On the DC Power Budget and RF Performance Study of a Linearized 1 Watt Medium RF Power Amplifier for Enterprise Wireless BS Applications

Abstract

This paper presents the Direct Current (DC) power budget analysis and Radio Frequency (RF) frontend system design considerations of a medium Power Amplifier (PA) with average power output of 1watt. The PA system analysis is performed in a simulation environment for three linearization usage scenarios such as, Back-off, Digital Pre-Distortion (DPD) and Analog Pre-Distortion (APD) schemes. In the Back-off mode, the total RF frontend power consumption is 35.87 watt and with the usage of DPD topology the power consumption is 32.76 watt while with APD topology, the power consumption is 23.74 watt. The APD topology considers a Commercial off the Shelf (COTS) design topology with using moderately non-linear PA device operation. As compared to the back-off operation, the DPD scheme has got a 8.6% estimated relative power saving and the APD provides an estimated relative power saving of 33.8%.