A 1.5-1.9-GHz All-Digital Tri-Phasing Transmitter With an Integrated Multilevel Class-D Power Amplifier Achieving 100-MHz RF Bandwidth

We present a prototype RF transmitter with an integrated multilevel class-D power amplifier (PA), implemented in 28-nm CMOS. The transmitter utilizes tri-phasing modulation, which combines three constant-envelope phase-modulated signals with coarse amplitude modulation in the PA. This new architectu...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE journal of solid-state circuits 2019-06, Vol.54 (6), p.1517-1527
Main Authors: Lemberg, Jerry, Martelius, Mikko, Roverato, Enrico, Antonov, Yury, Nieminen, Tero, Stadius, Kari, Anttila, Lauri, Valkama, Mikko, Kosunen, Marko, Ryynanen, Jussi
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
All-digital transmitter
Amplitude modulation
Bandwidth
Bandwidths
Broadband
class-D power amplifier (PA)
CMOS
Digital electronics
digital interpolating phase modulator (DIPM)
Frequency division multiplexing
Frequency synthesizers
Linearity
Multilevel
multilevel outphasing
Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing
Phase modulation
Power amplifiers
Power efficiency
Radio frequency
Radio transmitters
Signal processing
Transmitters
tri-phasing
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Summary:We present a prototype RF transmitter with an integrated multilevel class-D power amplifier (PA), implemented in 28-nm CMOS. The transmitter utilizes tri-phasing modulation, which combines three constant-envelope phase-modulated signals with coarse amplitude modulation in the PA. This new architecture achieves the back-off efficiency of multilevel outphasing, without linearity-degrading discontinuities in the RF output waveform. Because all signal processing is performed in the time domain up to the PA, the entire system is implemented with digital circuits and structures, thus also enabling the use of synthesis and place-and-route CAD tools for the RF front end. The effectiveness of the digital tri-phasing concept is supported by extensive measurement results. Improved wideband performance is validated through the transmission of orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) bandwidths up to 100 MHz. Enhanced reconfigurability is demonstrated with non-contiguous carrier aggregation and digital carrier generation between 1.5 and 1.9 GHz without a frequency synthesizer. For a 20-MHz 256-QAM OFDM signal at 3.5% error vector magnitude (EVM), the transmitter achieves 22.6-dBm output power and 14.6% PA efficiency. Thanks to the high linearity enabled by tri-phasing, no digital predistortion is needed for the PA.
ISSN:0018-9200
1558-173X
DOI:10.1109/JSSC.2019.2902753