Linearity, Intermodulation Distortion and ACLR in Outphasing Amplifiers

The distortion from amplitude and phase imbalance in outphasing amplifiers is discussed. The relation between dynamic range (DR) and suppression of distortion is shown to approximately follow a simple linear relationship depending on the DR. Approximate relations between adjacent channel leakage power ratio (ACLR) for different kinds of commonly used communication signals and two-tone intermodulation distortion are given. Relations between loss in output power and reduction of DR as functions of duty cycle in switching-based outphasing amplifiers are also given. An approximate method to evaluate the possible performance of digital pre-distortion (DPD) is also given by considering a DPD capable of correcting all distortions except amplitude imbalance. The predicted performance is compared to the performance obtained using a DPD-model found in the literature. The results show that the method is in good agreement, demonstrating that the proposed method can be used for design and evaluation of predistorted outphasing amplifiers.