Intel Mobile Communications Gmbh

Intel Deutschland Gmbh

Chi-Tao Goe

Andrea Camuffo

Jan-Erik Mueller

Nick Shute

Sandro Pinarello

Bernhard Sogl

Nicholas Shute

Embodiments related to the setting of an operating point of an amplifier are described and depicted.

Operating point setting of an amplifier

An apparatus for providing a linearity information associated with an amplifier includes an operating state determinator and an evaluator. The operating state determinator is configured to obtain information describing a gain of the amplifier for at least one bias condition of the amplifier. The evaluator is configured to obtain the linearity information based on both the information describing the gain of the amplifier and information about the at least one bias condition of the amplifier using a gain-bias characteristic of the amplifier. A bias circuit including the apparatus for providing the linearity information is also disclosed. A corresponding method for providing the linearity information includes: using the information describing the gain of the amplifier and the information about the at least one bias condition with the gain-bias characteristics to determine a relation of a current operating point described by the information with respect to the gain-bias characteristic; and deriving the linearity information from said relation.

Apparatus and method for providing amplifier linearity information

One embodiment of the present invention relates to a method and apparatus are provided herein for reducing the power consumption of a transmission chain while maintaining an acceptable figure of merit (e.g., linearity). In one embodiment, an adaptive biasing element is configured to perform adaptive biasing to reduce current consumption of a transmission chain by adjusting the operating point of one or more transmission chain elements (e.g., power amplifier, mixer, etc.). However, since adaptive biasing may reduce the linearity of a transmitted signal, its use is limited by the degradation of figure of merit caused by the introduced non-linearities. Accordingly, a pre-distortion element may be configured to perform adaptive digital pre-distortion (DPD) on a transmission chain input signal to account for non-linearities generated through the adaptive biasing, therefore allowing the adaptive biasing to further reduce the current consumption while maintaining an acceptable figure of merit.

Joint adaptive bias point adjustment and digital pre-distortion for power amplifier

One embodiment of the present invention relates to a transmission circuit configured to dynamically adjust a number of active transistor cells within a power amplifier based upon a signal quality measurement determined from a feedback. The transmission circuit comprises a transmission chain having a power amplifier configured to provide an output signal. A feedback loop extends from the output of the power amplifier to a control circuit and is configured to provide measured information about output signal (e.g., phase, amplitude, etc.) to the control circuit. The control circuit utilizes the measured signal information to evaluate a measured signal quality of the output signal. The control circuit dynamically adjusts a number of active transistor cells within a power amplifier based upon a signal quality measurement until the power amplifier is optimized to operate at an operating point for low current and good transmission quality.

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Haar, Germany

Chi-Tao Goe