Characterizing the effects of nonlinear amplifiers on linear modulation for digital portable radio communications

The design and performance of linear modulation techniques and RF power amplifiers are discussed. Various types of power amplifier are used in the comparison, using simulation, of out-of-band radiation and power efficiency. The designs focus on high-frequency silicon bipolar power amplifiers suitable for low-power portable radio applications. Two different 4-QAM (4-level quadrature amplitude modulation) schemes are compared. Power efficiency as high as 40% can be achieved using a dynamically biased amplifier operating near saturation. The effects of nonlinear distortions from power amplifiers on adjacent channel interference as well as bit and block error rate performance are also investigated.>