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Real-time frequency agility is one of the key limitations of current all-digital transmitters (ADTs). In this paper, to address this problem, an ADT based on direct-RF generation is proposed and implemented in a field-programmable gate array (FPGA). To achieve this, the pulse encoding is performed after the digital upconversion, which presents challenges in the pulse encoder implementation. However, the proposed design considerably improves the frequency agility when compared with current state-of-the-art approaches. Two different pulse encoders were designed in this paper, one is based on pulsewidth modulation (PWM) and the other on delta–sigma modulation ( \mathrm \Delta \Sigma \textM ). These units are implemented with high parallelization to achieve the required equivalent sampling rates. The proposed design enables the implementation of all-digital RF transmitters in FPGA with a widely tunable carrier frequency. In this paper, a variation from 0.1 up to 6 GHz of carrier frequency, with a maximum frequency resolution of 1.5625 MHz, is demonstrated. Measurement results in terms of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and error-vector magnitude are presented and discussed. In the case of the PWM, maximum SNRs of 39 and 36 dB were obtained for a 5 and 10 MBd of symbol rates (SRs). In the case of \mathrm \Delta \Sigma \textM , maximum SNRs of 38 and 35 dB were obtained for 20 and 40 MBd of the SR. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents a new all-digital transceiver architecture fully integrated into a single field-programmable gate array chip. Both the radio frequency (RF) receiver and the transmitter were entirely implemented using a digital datapath from the baseband up to the RF stage without the use of conventional analog-to-digital converter, digital-to-analog converter, or analog mixer. The transmitter chain uses delta-sigma modulation and digital upconversion to produce a two-level RF output signal. The receiver uses a high-speed comparator and pulsewidth modulation to convert the RF signal into a single-bit data stream, which is digitally filtered and then downconverted. Both the transmitter and the receiver are agile with flexible carrier frequency, bandwidth, and modulation capabilities. The transceiver error vector magnitude and the signal-to-noise ratio figures of merit were analyzed in a point-to-point transmission to evaluate the transmitter’s performance. The results show the feasibility of this approach as a more flexible alternative to common radio architectures. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents a novel multilevel radio frequency (RF) pulsewidth modulation (PWM) method for all-digital transmitters (ADTx) that actively eliminates the selected harmonics of RF-PWM. Compared with existing multilevel RF-PWM techniques, this method uses several adaptive thresholds and controls the pulsewidth of the corresponding subpulses to make the selected harmonics cancel each other out and keep the fundamental frequency component proportional to input envelope. For the third-harmonic elimination, the corresponding five-level RF-PWM scheme presented in this paper shows that it can significantly relax the filtering requirements and improve the wideband performance of the ADTx. The proposed scheme is verified by extensive simulations and offline measurements. The simulations show good potential for high-frequency operation up to gigahertz ADTx. The measured results show that the third-harmonic suppression of the proposed scheme has increased with the decreasing of the time resolution for digital implementations. For a 3.80-dB peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) QPSK signal and a 6.04-dB PAPR 16QAM signal at 200-MHz carrier, the proposed scheme can achieve above −51- and −48-dBc third-harmonic suppression, respectively, when the time resolution is 50 ps and relative time resolution is 1%, and improves above 30 dBc to the existing schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new method of reactive-combiner structure to be used as part of a multiphase digital pulsewidth modulated polar transmitter (DPWMPT). It overcomes the limitations of previous implementations of the multiphase pulse-modulated polar transmitter related to terminating pulsewidth modulation (PWM) harmonics located outside the passband, thereby improving both PWM harmonic suppression by using multiphase aliasing-free digital PWM technique and increasing overall efficiency by using reactive combining. For validation, a prototype transmitter was implemented and tested with a 64-QAM 20-MHz bandwidth long-term evolution (LTE) downlink signal with a 7.5-dB peak-to-average power ratio at 2140 MHz. The prototype dual-phase DPWMPT architecture achieved an output power level of 37 dBm and power-added efficiency of 33.5% while passing the stringent spectral requirements of the LTE standard for small-cell base stations using only simply memoryless predistortion correction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a wideband power recycling technique for pulse-modulated polar transmitters (PMPTs). The technique allows unwanted out-of-band modulation spurs in PMPTs to be rectified and recovered back to the power supply for efficiency improvement. By configuring the power amplifiers as a balanced amplifier with dual-phase digital pulse-width modulation, the odd modulation spurs can be extracted directly from the isolation port of the output-combining quadrature coupler. Using the proposed architecture, the prototype transmitter achieved 59.1% drain efficiency at an output channel power of 26.2 dBm using a 10-MHz bandwidth long-term evolution 16-quadrature amplitude modulation test signal at 836.5 MHz. After output signal restoration by a surface-acoustic-wave filter, an output power level of 24.8 dBm and 42.8% drain efficiency were achieved while passing the spectral and receive-band-noise requirements without using any digital pre-distortion techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pulse-modulated polar transmitter (PMPT) uses the envelope information to pulse modulate the phase information to implement a highly linear and highly efficient polar transmitter. The bandwidth of the PMPT is primarily determined by the pulsewidth modulation sampling frequency of the envelope information. For wide bandwidth applications such as long-term evolution (LTE), finite rise and fall times of the RF pulses distort the envelope information. In this paper, the nonideal RF pulses are analyzed and an envelope correction method is proposed to reduce the distortion in wide bandwidth applications using the PMPT architecture. For validation, a cellular-band prototype transmitter system was constructed using commercially available components. Using a 20-MHz bandwidth 16-QAM LTE signal at 836.5 MHz, the prototype transmitter achieved an output power of 22.7 dBm and drain efficiency of 33% while passing the spectral requirements of the LTE standard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an original agile all-digital feedback loop receiver system for power amplifier (PA) linearization using digital predistortion (DPD). The proposed feedback loop is based on a radio-frequency pulse-width modulation analog-to-digital converter. For proof of concept, the system was implemented using a single field programmable gate array chip. Additionally, the system is also presented in a remote version, suitable for future centralized radio access network, in which the DPD can be performed in a central unit, far from the PA. Measurement results of important DPD metrics, such as adjacent channel power ratio (ACPR) and error vector magnitude (EVM), are presented and evaluated to verify the correct functioning of the proposed feedback loop. The obtained results demonstrate the system’s agility and high analog input bandwidth from a few megahertzes up to almost 4 GHz, while maintaining the LTE ACPR and EVM requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Switched mode RF power amplifiers (PAs) under bitstream modulations, such as bandpass or envelope delta–sigma modulations (EDSMs), have received increasing attentions over the past years. Such amplifiers offer high power efficiencies under power back-off conditions with pulse train voltage waveforms yet maintain their linearity in amplification through digital coding and modulations. This paper presented an $X$ -band switched mode PA based on the pulsed load modulation (PLM) technique with multilevel EDSM to realize broadband efficient amplification of nonconstant-envelope signals. The complete theory of power efficiency for PLM under three-level EDSM is presented. The X$ -band PA is implemented with 0.25- \mu \text{m} discrete GaN transistors from Triquint. Both two-level and three-level EDSM techniques were tested and compared in regard to their quantization noise levels and power efficiencies. Under the three-level EDSM, the PA delivered 34.6-dBm output power for a WCDMA uplink signal with 100-MHz bandwidth and 5.3-dB peak-to-average power ratio at the carrier frequency of 9.2 GHz. The measured drain efficiency and the power-added efficiency with the modulation were 34.6% and 26.5%, respectively. The adjacent channel leakage power ratio at the output was measured to be 32.2/32.3 dBc at the 100-MHz offsets without using digital predistortion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considering the tradeoff between efficiency and output ripple over a wide load range, a monolithic dc–dc buck converter with switch-on-demand modulation (SODM) and switch size control (SSC) is presented in this paper. SODM achieves a hybrid mode of pulse skip and pulse width modulation (PWM) without mode detection circuit. The converter's on time is adaptively adjusted with the load demand, achieving low output voltage ripple. Detecting the output of the error amplifier by a comparator, the SSC circuit can select appropriate switch size according to load current for reducing switching loss in a light load. The threshold level of the comparator varies with respect to the amount of slope compensation, which maintains a substantially constant switch size changing point. Experimental results show that the fabricated converter with the proposed scheme achieves high efficiency from 83% to 96% over a wide load range from 10 mA to 5 A. The switch size is 1/4 of the maximum value when load current is below 1 A with 0.5-A hysteresis. Also, the measured maximum output ripple is less than 10 mV. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

All-digital transmitters are getting increased attention due to its closer proximity to the ideal software-defined radio (SDR) transmitter. In this paper we propose a new transmitter architecture that addresses two key limitations of current approaches, namely, the poor coding efficiency and the high quality factor requirements of the RF output reconstruction filter that significantly limit the practical usability and dissemination of these new flexible RF transmitters. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents a highly efficient polar transmitter using interleaving pulse modulation for multiple communication standards. Using the proposed interleaving pulse modulation technique, a polar transmitter can suppress the odd-order output spurs deeply with a feasible value of essential sampling frequency and keep the residual spurs from falling into the receive bands. To validate the proposed technique, a prototype polar transmitter was constructed and evaluated. Using global system for mobile communications, enhanced data rates for GSM evolution, and wideband code division multiple access (WCDMA) signals at 836.5 MHz, the polar transmitter achieved 68%, 45.5%, and 41.2% power-added efficiency at output power levels of 28, 26, and 25 dBm, respectively. The measurement results were able to pass the spectral requirements defined by the respective standards without the use of any pre-distortion or calibration techniques. Moreover, the polar transmitter was able to achieve an output dynamic range of 80 dB required by the WCDMA standard. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pulse-modulated polar transmitter (PMPT) uses envelope information to pulse modulate phase information to implement highly linear and highly efficient polar transmitters. Previous implementations of the PMPT successfully achieved bandwidths up to 5 MHz. However, as the bandwidth of the signal increases, nonidealities of the PMPT limit the performance of this architecture. The nonidealities are predominantly aliasing from pulsewidth modulation (PWM) and distortions from switching, which degrade the spectral performance. By using aliasing-free digital PWM and digital pre-distortion concurrently, spectral performance of the PMPT can be improved for wide bandwidth applications. For validation, a prototype transmitter was tested with a 20-MHz bandwidth downlink long-term evolution (LTE) signal at 836.5 MHz. Using the proposed method, the prototype transmitter achieved an output power of 19.8 dBm and drain efficiency of 24.4% while passing the spectral requirements of the LTE standard for femtocell base stations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Radio frequency (RF) all-digital transmitter (ADT) is one of the most attractive techniques in the next-generation RF transceivers, especially in the carrier aggregation and multiband, multistandard transmission scenario. Among the multiband RF ADTs reported in recent years, the delta–sigma modulation (DSM)-based scheme is the most popular. However, implementing multiband DSM-based RF ADT in field-programmable gate array (FPGA) produces problems of high complexity, high resource consumption, limited carrier frequency (CF) agility, and poor indicator performance. To address these problems, a dual-band ADT architecture with mapping-based pulse width modulation (MPWM) method is first presented in this article. In the ADT, the dual-band intermediate frequency (IF) signals are mapped to the RF sequence by a lookup table (LUT), and the CF can be adjusted by updating the LUT values. The operation principle of the ADT is explained, and the noise analysis model of MPWM is given. Furthermore, three optimization methods are presented to improve the performance of ADT. To evaluate the proposed architecture and methods, the ADT is implemented on an FPGA chip, and the resource consumption is relatively low. A dual band of 16- and 64-QAM signals with bandwidth (BW) of 20 MHz is tested with different CF and CF spacings. From 1 to 4.1 GHz, the adjacent channel leakage ratio (ACLR) values are below −43 dBc, and the error vector magnitude (EVM) values are below 3.5%. From 4.1 to 6.15 GHz, the ACLR values are below −40 dBc, and the EVM values are below 5%. The proposed architecture and design methods can be applied to triple-band or other more band ADT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents spur reduction and efficiency enhancement techniques for pulse-modulated polar transmitters (PMPTs). The technique allows low-power out-of-band odd spurs in PMPTs to be suppressed deeply before going into power amplifiers (PAs). By configuring the PAs as a balanced Doherty amplifier for efficiency improvement with quad-phase aliasing-free digital pulsewidth modulation (PWM), the several even spurs can be separated directly into the isolation port of the output quadrature coupler. The residual even spurs can be easily suppressed using direct connection of an absorptive bandpass filter (BPF) behind each PA. Using the proposed architecture, the prototype transmitter achieved 49.4% drain efficiency at an output channel power of 28 dBm using 20-MHz bandwidth long-term evolution (LTE) 16-quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) test signals at 836.5 MHz. After output signal restoration by the proposed absorptive filters, an output power level of 27.1 dBm and 40% drain efficiency were achieved while keeping the spur level close to −60 dBc without using any surface acoustic wave (SAW) filter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A comparison of envelope elimination and restoration (EER) and envelope tracking (ET) is discussed and a ‘hybrid’ wideband EER power amplifier (PA) for the WLAN 802.11g system is proposed. A 60% efficiency (the output envelope signal power/input dc power) DC-20-MHz wideband envelope amplifier is designed for wideband EER and wideband ET (WBET) applications. A design method is developed to optimize the efficiency of the envelope amplifier for a given peak-to-average ratio and average slew rate of the envelope signal. An experimental ‘hybrid’ Class-E EER system shows an overall efficiency (modulated RF output power/envelope amplifier dc input power) of 36% and power-added efficiency (the modulated RF output power/envelope amplifier dc input power plus RF input power) of 28% for a WLAN 802.11g signal at 19-dBm (80 mW) output power at 2.4 GHz. Digital predistortion, time alignment, and memory effect mitigation are implemented. The measured 3 % error vector magnitude exceeds the 802.11g specification for 5% for a 54-Mb/s modulation signal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A fully tunable baseband ultra-wideband pulse generator realized with commercial off-the-shelf components is presented. It is made of high-speed logic gates and comparators, and it is compliant with the current-mode logic digital standard. The pulse emitted power and bandwidth are tunable with pulsewidth and amplitude variation, which shows high flexibility. This advantage simplifies the design of the downstream shaping network, as so to be compliant with international regulations. A differential output with very low jitter is demonstrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A pulsed dynamic load modulation (PDLM) technique is introduced for a high-efficiency linear transmitter for wideband modulation signals with a large peak-to-average power ratio. By combining the dynamic load modulation technique with the class-S amplifier concept, the pulse-width-modulated envelope signal is applied to the switchable-load matching circuit so that the power amplifier (PA) can operate near optimum efficiencies in the backed-off power region. A comprehensive analysis is presented to prove the circuit concept using the simplified theory, followed by the full circuit simulations using harmonic-balance analysis. The effect of nonideal terminations at the intrinsic device plane is also analyzed to understand the potential issues in the practical implementation. The proof-of-concept circuits are designed and fabricated using a silicon-on-insulator CMOS process, where a two-stage PA, a load switch, a pulse-width modulation circuit, and a switch driver are implemented in two separate chips. The fabricated PDLM PA operating at 837 MHz shows continuous-wave efficiencies in excess of 44% across the 6-dB power back-off region from the saturated output power. A power-added efficiency as high as 43.4% is achieved at the output power of 24.8 dBm using 10-MHz-bandwidth 16 quadrature amplitude modulation long-term evolution (LTE) signals. Unlike the case of the envelope-tracking techniques, the PDLM PA of this work maintains the overall efficiencies as the LTE signal bandwidth increases. The PDLM PA of this work can provide a potential solution for high-efficiency PAs for future mobile terminals using wideband modulation signals. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

All-digital outphasing transmitter architecture using multidimensional power coding (MDPC) is proposed for noncontiguous concurrent multiband transmission with a high power efficiency. MDPC transforms multiband digital baseband signals into multibit 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 radio frequency (RF) pulse-width modulation (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 and 500 MHz frequency band is transmitted with -30 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the saturation characteristics of fast photodetectors. Frequency-domain compression measurements; Normalization of pulsewidth to its nominal unsaturated value as a function of the peak photocurrent; Typical time-domain responses.