Analysis
Nujira files 100th Envelope Tracking patent
Nujira today announced the filing of its one hundredth patent, giving it the world’s most extensive and complete portfolio of patents filed or granted covering envelope tracking and the implementation of efficient wideband power amplifier (PA) transmission systems. Nujira’s patent portfolio covers energy efficient RF transmitters in cellular handset, wireless infrastructure and digital broadcast applications across the US, Asia and Europe.
“ETim Haynes continued, “As Envelope Tracking is adopted, we are seeing increased activity both from start-ups and established industry players around Envelope Tracking. We’ve been actively working on the technology since 2002, and our first patent was filed more than 8 years ago. Given the depth and breadth of our IPR portfolio, it’s hard for us to see how people can work around all of our patents, and we will be keeping a close watch for any possible infringements.”
Envelope Tracking dynamically modulates the power supply of an RF PA in line with the signal amplitude. The high bandwidth, fast tracking performance of Nujira’s ET implementation ensures that the PA is always operating in compression, resulting in high efficiencies even for signals with a wide dynamic range, such as 20 MHz LTE channels. Whilst this principle has been known and actively studied since the 1930’s, Nujira has been the first to successfully address the challenge of tracking the transmitted signal accurately in commercial products for 3G, 4G and Digital TV applications.
Nujira’s IPR portfolio covers not only the technical breakthroughs that underpin Nujira’s implementation of high bandwidth, high efficiency ET modulators, but also wider aspects. These include system architectures, timing alignment, linearization with and without Digital Pre Distortion (DPD), PA device optimisation, system performance optimisation, and production-line calibration.