1340 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 54, NO. 4, APRIL 2006
Augmented Hammerstein Predistorter for
Linearization of Broad-Band Wireless Transmitters
Taijun Liu, Member, IEEE,
Slim Boumaiza, Member, IEEE
, and
Fadhel M. Ghannouchi, Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—In this paper, an augmented lookup-table-based
Hammerstein predistorter is proposed for the first time in order
to further improve the pre-correction capability of the tradi-
tional Hammerstein predistorter in the context of broad-band
high-power wireless transmitters. The predistorter scheme con-
sists of two separate modules, and its parameters are determined
in two steps, which are: 1) static predistorter identification and
then 2) dynamic part identification. The performance assessment
of the newly proposed predistorter is carried out on a wireless
transmitter prototype, which includes an
-band push–pull GaAs
field-effect transistor 45-dBm peak-envelope power amplifier.
Moreover, one- and three-carrier Third-Generation Partnership
Projects frequency-division duplex wide-band code-division mul-
tiple-access signals are used as test signals to verify the robustness
of this novel predistorter under different bandwidth signals. The
linearized transmitter prototype output spectrum demonstrates
noticeable superiority of the proposed augmented predistorter in
suppressing the spectrum regrowth caused by the memory effects
in comparison to the traditional Hammerstein predistorter.
Index Terms—Augmented Hammerstein predistorter, broad-
band wireless transmitters, Hammerstein predistorter, lookup
table (LUT), memory effects.
I. INTRODUCTION
H
IGH-EFFICIENCY wide-band transmitter design for
modern high-speed wireless communication systems,
such as worldwide interoperability for microwave access
(WiMAX), third-generation (3G) and beyond systems, etc., is
a complex task since it involves numerous inconsistent require-
ments. In such contexts, simultaneously accomplishing high
linearity and high-power efficiency is particularly a great chal-
lenge. In fact, to efficiently utilize the precious limited spectrum
resources, several complicated modulation schemes have been
widely used in the modern wide-band wireless communica-
tion systems. These modulated signals lead to a nonconstant
envelope with large peak-to-average power ratios (PAPRs),
which can be as high as 12 dB in some cases. Consequently,
the power amplifier (PA) in the transmitter has to be designed
either to operate near its saturated area, so as to provide higher
system power efficiency, or at large backoff from its nonlinear
region, in order to meet the required linearity. Accordingly,
the PA ends up with either high efficiency, but bad linearity, or
Manuscript received May 23, 2005; revised October 4, 2005. This work was
supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
(NSERC), by the Informatics Circle of Research Excellence (iCORE), by TR-
Labs, and by Canada Research Chairs (CRC).
The authors are with the Intelligent RF Radio Laboratory, Electrical
and Computer Engineering Department, University of Calgary, Calgary,
AB, Canada T2N 1N4 (e-mail: liut@ucalgary.ca; sboumaiz@ucalgary.ca;
fghannou@ucalgary.ca).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TMTT.2006.871230
vice versa. Therefore, to satisfy the linearity requirement while
operating the PA at its nonlinear area, one has to correct for the
different sources of distortion all along the entire transmitter
chain. For this reason, different linearization techniques, such
as feedback [1], feed-forward [2], and predistortion [3], [4]
have been proposed to improve the linearity of the transmitter.
Among the various linearization techniques, digital baseband
predistortion is one of the most promising and cost-effective
linearization techniques due to its digital implementation that
offers significant accuracy and flexibility. Considering its sim-
plicity and relative ease of implementation, the lookup table
(LUT) is by far the most widely used means for the construction
of the inverse of the amplitude-modulation /amplitude-modu-
lation (AM/AM) and amplitude-modulation /phase-modulation
(AM/PM) characteristic curves of the transmitter or PA [5]–[8].
However, this type of predistorter is only valid for memory-
less nonlinear cases such as the traditional narrow-band wire-
less communication systems.
In the wide-band transmitter/PA context, the memory effects
exhibited by the transmitter/PA significantly limit the ability of
the memoryless predistorter to suppress the spectrum regrowth
[9]. These memory effects can generally be categorized as elec-
trothermal memory effects and electrical memory effects. The
electrothermal memory effects are mainly caused by the thermal
capacitance and resistance that form a low-pass thermal filter.
The electrical memory effects can be mainly attributed to the
nonconstant frequency response of the transmitter around the
carrier frequency, the impedance variation of bias circuits at
baseband, and the harmonic loading in the PA power stage [10],
[11]. In the context of a broad-band wireless transmitter, the
electrical memory effects are the dominant sources of the spec-
trum regrowth since the thermal filter time constant is too large
compared to the inverse of the signal bandwidth [12]. Therefore,
the memory effects in the remainder of this paper are limited to
the electrical memory effects.
Different predistorter architectures, which are intended
to compensate for the nonlinearity, as well as the memory
effects, have been reported in the literature. For example, a
memory polynomial model was proposed in [13] and utilized in
[14]–[16] to address these effects. However, a memory polyno-
mial-based predistorter suffers from numerical instability when
higher order polynomial terms are included because a matrix
inversion is needed for the determination of the polynomial
coefficients [17]. Alternatively, Raich
et al. [17] employed
orthogonal polynomials to alleviate the numerical instability
problem associated with the traditional polynomials.
Two-box-based predistorters, which are called either a Ham-
merstein predistortor or a Wiener predistorter, depending on
the cascading order of the nonlinear block and linear block,
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