All-digital outphasing transmitter architecture using multidimensional power coding (MDPC) is proposed for non-contiguous concurrent multiband transmission with a high power efficiency. MDPC transforms multiband digital baseband signals into multi-bit low-resolution digital signals that drive switching-mode PAs. A prototype digital outphasing transmitter consists of two 1-GHz bandwidth GaN Class-D PAs and a Chireix power combiner. The two GaN PAs are driven by bipolar RF PWM signals, which are transformed from a concurrent dual-band LTE signal by MDPC. The dual-band LTE signal with 15-MHz aggregate channel bandwidth at 240 MHz and 500 MHz frequency band is transmitted with -30 dBc and -37 dBc out-of-band emissions, respectively. Digital outphasing achieves more than two times higher coding efficiency than conventional concurrent dual-band digital transmitters with the same PAs in Class-S operation. Measured power coding efficiencies of 35.4% and 47.1% are observed with outphasing bipolar and 3-level RF PWM signals respectively, which are encoded from the dual-band LTE signal.
IEEE MTT Transaction, PA Special IssueThis work may not be copied or reproduced in whole or in part for any commercial purpose. Permission to copy in whole or in part without payment of fee is granted for nonprofit educational and research purposes provided that all such whole or partial copies include the following: a notice that such copying is by permission of Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc.; an acknowledgment of the authors and individual contributions to the work; and all applicable portions of the copyright notice. Copying, reproduction, or republishing for any other purpose shall require a license with payment of fee to Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc. All rights reserved. Index Terms-Class-S power amplifier, concurrent dual-band transmitter, inter-band carrier aggregation, power coding, multiband delta-sigma modulator, outphasing.
We report a digitally-driven switching-mode amplifier using GaN devices in Voltage-Mode Class D operation, for use at 465 MHz (the recently designated frequency for LTE Band 31). The amplifier is fabricated as an integrated circuit including output devices and drivers. The output circuit employs two stacked GaN FETs; a bootstrap-drive configuration is used in order to increase the driver-stage efficiency for the uppermost GaN FET. The GaN VMCD amplifier achieves peak power-added efficiency of 66.6%, and an output power of 3.3W. At 6dB power backoff, power-added efficiency of 36.3% is achieved. These power-added efficiency values are the highest for reported GaN VMCD amplifiers at a commercial wireless frequency.
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