In designing a power amplifier, a number of factors need to be balanced against each other including specifications like linearity, high efficiency, low cost, or high power. For example, a Doherty-type power amplifier, as described in LUMPED ELEMENT BASED DOHERTY POWER AMPLIFIER TOPOLOGY IN CMOS PROCESS, by Tongchoi et. al. in IEEE Int. Symp. Circuits and Systems, May 2003, pp. 445-448 which is incorporated herein by reference for all purposes, may provide power efficiency at low cost, but may have nonlinearity. Improved linearity can be achieved using active compensation of the amplifier, where a measurement is made of the difference between the actual output of the amplifier and the desired output of the amplifier. The measurement of the difference between the actual and the desired outputs requires high-quality, high-speed, and therefore, expensive components. It would be useful to improve linearity of a power amplifier without requiring high-quality, high-speed, and expensive components.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds