Behavioral Modeling and Predistortion of Wideband Wireless Transmitters

Preface

Wireless systems are offering a wide variety of services to an ever increasing number of users. Undeniably, this connectivity has contributed to enhancing the quality of life. Though, the proliferation of wireless handheld devices and base stations led to an alarming downside due to their environmental impact. In fact, the carbon footprint of the wireless communication infrastructure is reaching unprecedented levels. This stimulated a global awareness about the need to reduce base stations energy consumption. In order to make communication systems more eco-friendly and “greener”, significant research work is being carried out at various aspects of base station design. This includes, among other things, scaling of energy needs depending on the traffic and network load, improving the ratio of quality of service to radiofrequency power, and increasing the overall efficiency of the base station. A closer look at base stations power consumption reflects that their overall efficiency can be significantly improved by increasing that of the radio frequency front end and especially the power amplifier. This would not only make communication systems greener but also reduce their deployment and running costs in terms of capital expenditure (CAPEX) and operational expenditure (OPEX), and result in substantial financial benefits.

Technically, building power amplifiers with peak power efficiencies as high as 80% has become feasible thanks to the development of new transistor technologies ...