TI announces wideband digital pre-distortion amplifier

TI’s high-performance GC5325 combines a crest factor reduction block (CFR) and a digital pre-distortion block (DPD) to improve power amplifier (PA) efficiencies to more than 25 percent for Class AB PAs and more than 40 percent for Doherty PAs. The flexible GC5325 supports multiple PA architectures, multi-mode operation, and various air interface standards including: CDMA2000, WCDMA, TD-SCDMA, OFDMA (WiMAX, LTE), HSPA, and HSPA+.

The GC5325 DPD transmit architecture incorporates a TI floating point digital signal processor (DSP) to implement the advanced linearization algorithm which relaxes multi-carrier power amplifier design specifications and increases PA operating efficiencies. The GC5325 device has greater than 100 MHz of DPD bandwidth which allows for correction of over 20 MHz of 5th order distortion products.

System level performance can be evaluated in the manufacturer’s design with the easy-to-use GC5325 system evaluation kit (GC5325SEK). Engineers can measure PA efficiency, Error Vector Magnitude (EVM), Peak-to-Average Ratio (PAR), and Adjacent Channel Leakage Ratio (ACLR). In addition, customers can save four man months of development time by leveraging the GC5325SEK architecture to implement their own design. The GC5325SEK consists of a dual-transmitter architecture, supporting transmit diversity, multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO), and beamforming for smart antenna applications. The GC5325 uses a composite baseband input consisting of single or multiple carriers combined into a single digital signal, allowing customers to leverage their existing Digital Up-conversion (DUC) IP as well as TI’s complete signal chain solutions for communications infrastructure applications. The GC5325SEK utilizes TI’s TMS320C6727 low-cost, floating-point DSP in addition to the DAC5682z (1GHz dual interpolating DAC), ADS6149 (Low power 14-bit, 250 MSPS ADC), and TRF3703 (400 MHz – 4 GHz IQ Modulator).

“OEMs are aggressively looking for new ways to meet wireless service providers' green initiatives and digital pre-distortion combined with crest factor reduction is a way to make a significant impact on lowering overall power consumption in basestations, remote radio heads, and wireless digital repeaters,” said David Briggs, general manager of TI’s RF and Radio products. “Our customers can use the GC5325SEK, in conjunction with their own PA, and within an hour, be able to demonstrate the real-world advantages of TI’s CFR/DPD solution.”