Digital predistortion of envelope-tracking power amplifiers under average power back-off and long-term average power efficiency for base-station applications

In many base-station applications, the load/usage fluctuates over time periods of hours to days, thereby varying the required transmit power by as much as 10 dB. It is desirable to maintain high efficiency and linearity in the power amplifier under these back-off conditions in order to achieve high long-term efficiency. This paper demonstrates a scalable digital predistortion (DPD) approach that can be applied under different power back-off levels in envelope-tracking (ET) amplifiers and quantifies the associated efficiency. Efficiency comparisons are made with other amplifier configurations such as Class B and Doherty. Efficiency of 60% at full power (35 W average power) and >30% efficiency at 10 dB average power back-off are measured in an ET amplifier with a 7.54 dB peak-to-average ratio (PAPR) single-carrier WCDMA signal while meeting linearity specifications. Long-term base-station usage probability functions are presented. The long-term efficiency of the ET amplifiers is simulated to be greater than that of Class B and Doherty amplifiers.