LINC power amplifier combiner method efficiency optimization

Linear amplification using nonlinear components (LINC) is a method of vecto r summing two constant amplitude phase-modulated signals to achieve power a mplification. The:theoretical efficiency of the LINC power amplifier has be en reported as 100% since highly efficient nonlinear constant amplitude amp lifiers can be used. However, the 100% efficiency performance is only possi ble at one or two loads along the power output curve. The bulk of the paper s regarding LINC has focused on clever implementations of the signal vector decomposition as well as methods to achieve highly linear signal separatio n. There has been little regard in the literature to the signal combiner im plementation necessary to achieve the high power-added efficiency (PAE) of the LINC radio frequency (RF) power amplifier Efficiency is not an intrinsi c property of the combiner implementations, however, combiner method is the single biggest contributor to efficient performance of an LINC RF power am plifier, This paper develops an analysis method that determines the efficie ncy of the LINC power amplifier as a function of the amplitude modulation s tatistics. This can be employed to design the RF communication system ampli tude modulation characteristics and to tradeoff and optimize the RF transmi tter PAE.