Hybrid Envelope Amplifier for envelope tracking power amplifier transmitters

Abstract

This paper presents an envelope tracking (ET) Power Amplifier (PA) whose architecture includes an efficient Envelope Amplifier (EA) and a bandwidth reduction algorithm suitable for real time applications. The EA consists of a hybrid amplifier combining switched and linear amplification. A bandwidth and slew-rate reduction algorithm has been incorporated in order to allow wide-band envelope amplifications. Non-linearities introduced by the Hybrid EA (HEA) and the dynamic supply are compensated with Digital Pre-Distortion. The ET PA has been tested using 64-QAM signals and commercial devices. Results show that non-linearities produced by the HEA are compensable and that the architecture provides efficiency improvements compared to the conventional linear EA.