Students:
- Christopher Liang
Advisor: A. Katz
Many modern wireless communication systems require highly linear power amplifiers (PAs). To meet this requirement, PAs are often used with a linearizer. A main factor in the cost of linearizers is the amount of time required to tune a linearizer. The development of an adaptive linearizer, which uses a feedback control system to tune itself could significantly reduce this cost .
An adaptive linearizer is currently in development. It employs two low frequency IF sampling paths, which contain filtering, amplification, and detection. These paths are limiting the performance of the adaptive system. Each of the components in the IF paths were analyzed and modifications were made to improve performance. Changes included additional filtering and the use of different amplifiers, which resulted in about a 9 dB improvement. The redesign effort is still in progress; currently achieved results show that improvement in IF chain performance is achievable.