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A linear-switch mode hybrid envelope tracking (ET) supply modulator utilizing adaptive biasing and gain enhanced current mirror operational transconductance amplifier (OTA) with class AB output stage in parallel with a switching regulator is presented. In comparison to a conventional OTA design with similar quiescent current consumption, proposed approach improves positive and negative slew rate from 50 to 93.4 V/ \mu \texts and −87 to −152.5 V/ \mu \texts , respectively, dc gain from 45 to 67 dB while consuming same amount of quiescent current. The proposed hybrid supply modulator achieves 83% peak efficiency, power-added efficiency (PAE) of 42.3% at 26.2 dBm for a 10-MHz 7.24-dB peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) long-term evolution (LTE) signal and improves PAE by 8% at 6 dB back off from 26.2-dBm power amplifier (PA) output power with respect to fixed supply. With a 10-MHz 7.24-dB PAPR quadrature-phase shift keying LTE signal the ET PA system achieves adjacent channel leakage ratio (ACLR) of −37.7 dBc and error vector magnitude (EVM) of 4.5% at 26.2-dBm PA output power, while with a 10-MHz 8.15-dB PAPR 64QAM LTE signal the ET PA system achieves ACLR of −35.6 dBc and EVM of 6% at 26-dBm PA output power without digital predistortion. The proposed supply modulator core circuit occupies 1.1-mm2 die area, and is fabricated in a 0.18- \mu \textm CMOS technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A novel backgate modulation technique alleviating limitations associated with supply-regulated polar transmitters is proposed. The backgate of a partially depleted silicon-on-insulator metal–semiconductor field-effect transistor with a breakdown voltage of 15 V is used to modulate the gain and output power of an RF power amplifier (PA). The high-impedance backgate provides high-efficiency and wide-dynamic-range modulation of PA gain. Measured results at 1.8 GHz demonstrate 16% power-added efficiency improvement at 6-dB backed-off output power, compared with the same RF PA without backgate modulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two integrated polar supply-modulated class E and F power amplifiers (PAs) in 0.18-μm SiGe BiCMOS process are presented. The amplifiers are used to transmit GSM-EDGE signals with an envelope dynamic range of 11 dB and a frequency range of 880–915 MHz. The amplifiers use switch-mode dc-dc buck converters for supply modulation, where sigma-delta (ΣΔM), delta (ΔM), and pulsewidth modulation are used to modulate the PA amplitude signal. A framework has been developed for comparing the three switching techniques for EDGE implementation. The measurement results show that AM gives the highest efficiency and lowest adjacent channel power, providing class E and F PA efficiencies of 33% and 31%, respectively, at maximum EDGE output power. The corresponding class E and F linearized amplifiers' output spectra at 400-kHz offset are -54 and -57 dBc, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pulsewidth modulation (PWM) and sigma-delta modulation (SDM) have been used in several high linearity, high accuracy power delivery applications such as dc-dc power converters, audio, and radio frequency power amplifiers and data converters. While PWM can generate high linearity signals with high efficiency, it suffers from discrete tonal output spectrums. SDM, on the other hand, can generate high linearity output spectrums with shaped quantization noise spectrums and lower efficiencies due to oversampling requirements. In this paper we present a particular class of carrier frequency modulated PWM (CFMPWM), which spreads the tonal content of regular PWM uniformly in frequency and reduces the baseband noise with respect to SDM by up to 15 dB. The new modulation scheme preserves the high efficiency properties of PWM. An approximate method to estimate the spectrum of CFMPWM signals with both deterministic and random modulation is also presented. Simulation results and experimental data are reported to analyze the spectral spreading properties of the proposed CFMPWM scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]