Design of a power amplifier for IEEE 802.11p applications

Abstract

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Vehicular communications in Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) and Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) are becoming more common and used nowadays. For this type of communications to work a standard was developed as an improvement from the Wi- Fi regular standard, the IEEE 802.11p, that works in the 5.9 GHz band. In order to allow the use of such communication systems, Power Ampli ers (PAs) are one of the most important parts of the RF frontends. They have to be as linear as possible to allow high transmission data rates and Spectrum Emission Mask (SEM) compliance. Linearity can be achieved through the correct selection of the transistor bias point or through predistortion. Since e ciency is also one of the main concerns for today's communication systems, predistortion is becoming a technique that is commonly used, avoiding an unnecessary back-o of the PA. In this thesis, the objective is to design and implement a PA that is compliant with the four power classes of the IEEE 802.11p standard: A, B, C and D, being D the most stringent one, which requires a highly linear ampli er. In order to achieve this goal, some theoretical concepts are explained during this thesis, regarding the standard and PA characteristics. The design and simulation are presented with several illustrations and results to sustain and describe all the work performed in a cohesive and simple way, from the PA design to the Digital Predistorter (PD) implementation. While for classes A, B and C the designed ampli er matches the speci cations, for class D a Digital PD was used. In the end of this document, the PA is tested with and without the PD, comparing both results and also doing the regular 1-tone tests for e ciency, gain and power output for the frequency of operation of the IEEE 802.11p standard. A critical analysis