ABSTRACT
Today’s ever-increasing demands for more bandwidth coupled with requirements for both high linearity and high efficiency create great challenges in the design of modern cellular handsets. The power amplifier (PA) in the transmitter chain is a particularly critical component. To prolong time between battery recharge, the PA must be very power efficient. Moreover, to comply with today’s spectrally efficient modulation forms, the PA must also be very linear. To alleviate the fundamental tradeoff between efficiency and linearity in the PA, radio frequency (RF) designers may employ complex transmitter configurations [1-3]. In an early stage of development, such designs require accurate simulation models of the PA and other vital building blocks. For the modeling, the RF designer may choose from three different methodical approaches (Figure 33.1): models based on device physics, models based on equivalent circuits, and behavioral models. The three approaches are briefly summarized in the following. After that, we will focus on behavioral models only.
