Summary: | There have been many efforts to improve efficiency of transmitter while meeting stringent linearity requirement of modern communication system. Among the technology to enhance efficiency of linear transmitter, the out-phasing technologies, also called the linear amplification with nonlinear components (LINC), is considered as a promising technology. LINC has been studied long times, since it provides excellent linearity with high efficiency by allowing adopt high efficient switch-mode power amplifiers. However, The LINC transmitter has some technical challenges: linearity degradation due to amplitude and phase mismatches, efficiency degradation due to poor combining efficiency, and narrow frequency bandwidth due to output matching network of switching power amplifier.
In this thesis, some state-of-the-art techniques for solving the problems of LINC transmitters are presented. An unbalanced phase calibration technique compensates amplitude/phase mismatches between two parallel paths in the LINC system, and multi-level LINC (MLINC) and an uneven multi-level LINC (UMLINC) structure improve the overall power efficiency. And the reconfigurable Class-D switching PA enables multi-band operation with high efficiency and good linearity. With these techniques, the new multi-band out-phasing transmitter improves the efficiency without sacrificing the linearity performance.
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