Fully-Integrated Silicon RF Distributed Amplifier Linearization

Driven by the demand of low-cost base stations deployment and enhanced micro-cellular coverage and capacity, Radio-over-fiber (RoF) has attracted much research attention as a convenient way to distribute RF signals to base stations and to subscribers. In RoF systems, a highly-linear optical transmitter is necessary to achieve the required signal dynamic range. Fully-integrated design techniques are required to address linearity improvements for RoF transceivers. Nonlinearities in wireless communications are responsible for a phenomena that degrades system's performance and must be minimized. A major design challenge for broadband amplifiers is the stringent linearity requirement over a wide bandwidth range, nonlinearities cause harmonics and unwanted intermodulation products which degenerate the transceiver performance. An ideal amplifier should have a linear relationship between the input and output signal. However this is not the case in a practical amplifier. As the input signal power level increases, this relationship becomes non-linear and causes distortion in the output signal. External linearization circuitry can be added to the amplifier to compensate for the non-linearity.

Autorentext

Ziad El-Khatib Ph.D Electrical Engineering from Carleton University, Canada. His research interests include CMOS RFIC. Leonard MacEachern Ph.D Electrical Engineering from Waterloo University, Canada, Professor at Carleton University. Samy A. Mahmoud Ph.D Electrical Engineering from Carleton University, Canada, Professor and Chancellor.