Low-Power Signal Component Separator for a 64-QAM 802.11 LINC Transmitter

摘要

A LINC transmitter provides linear amplification while employing two nonlinear high-efficiency power amplifiers. This work proposes a LINC architecture where the two constant-envelope components of the signal are separated in the baseband analog domain. The signal component separator can achieve a power consumption which is significantly lower than conventional digital implementations. A signal component separator for 64-QAM 802.11a/g Wireless LANs is implemented in a 0.25-$mu{hbox{m}}$ CMOS process, the circuit occupies less than 0.1 ${hbox{mm}}^2$ and consumes 45 mW from the 2.5-V supply. The measured EVM, ACPR, and alternate-ACPR of the recombined signal components are ${-}{hbox{37.6~dB}}$, ${-}{hbox{34.9~dB}}$ and ${-}{hbox{47.0~dB}}$, respectively.