Adaptive digital predistortion for linearization of power amplifier

Abstract

In most communication systems, power amplifiers are used to obtain high output power. The nonlinear characteristics of the power amplifier leads to the distortion of the output signal. This distortion affects the efficiency of the power amplifier. The way to reduce this effect is to linearize the power amplifier near the saturation region where it is nonlinear. The widely used technique for the linearization of power amplifiers is predistortion. The proposed technique for predistortion uses a LUT(look-up-table), a complex multiplier, an address calculator, delay elements and an adaptation logic. A new adaptation logic to update the LUT coefficients, is used. The predistorter is simulated in Matlab software using a baseband model for the power amplifier. 16-QAM baseband modulation is used to simulate the predistorter. In order to see the performance of the proposed predistorter, hardware logic is implemented in FPGA and experimental setup with RF circuits and RF power amplifier is used. For different LUT sizes, the algorithm is tested and for the LUT size of 64, nearly 15 dB improvement in power spectrum is observed. The LUT size of 64 is observed to be the optimal LUT size in the experiments.