New Design Paradigm for MIMO RF Power Amplifiers

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The global telecommunication industry faces the challenge of designing the next generation (e.g., 5G) of mobile networks to unleash the full potential of the internet by connecting people and machines on a massive scale. There is no telling the impact broadband mobile communication with tens of gigabits per seconds will have on societies across the world. However, one important goal for next generation wireless systems is to save energy while accommodating 10 times more data traffic. RF power amplifier (PA) is the component that consumes most energy in both base-stations and cell phones. Therefore, energy-efficient mobile network requires highly efficient RF amplifiers. This project contributes to this thrust by introducing a paradigm shift in design methodology that will enable faster and more effective design to achieve significant energy savings. In addition to these technical goals, the proposed research will also provide critical support to the wireless industry by training personnel for advanced 5G circuit design. A proactive data management plan will also be pursued for maximizing the impact of this project and its dissemination via an archival website and participation in the NSF Connection One Center funded by NSF IUCRC program. The research results will also be introduced in the classroom and in our educational labs. To provide a close exposure to these exciting research activities, undergraduate students in engineering will be recruited through a summer internship program to work on relevant sub-projects. Inspiring outreach activities in wireless technologies will also be scheduled to promote engineering education in high-schools and middle-schools.The development of highly efficient RF power amplifiers is required for the cost-effective deployment of next generation energy-efficient wireless networks accommodating 10 times more data traffic. Presently, RF PA designers rely on multi-harmonic source- and load-pull measurements or simulations for designing power-efficient PAs. Due to the huge multi-dimensional search space in design, this design technique is extremely slow and inefficient. In this project, the direct design of RF power amplifiers using the recently developed embedding PA technique will be pursued. The amplifiers are first designed at the current source reference planes. It is indeed now fully understood that for the optimal operation of RF power transistors, the designer must target on optimal operation at the intrinsic current-source reference-planes of the transistors. In this project, new PA classes and architectures will be investigated and compared to traditional ones. Until recently, the practical realization of ideal intrinsic PA mode of operation in the real-world remained crippled by the presence of linear and nonlinear device parasitics, which required time-consuming and inaccurate multi-harmonic source- and load-pull searches. However, with the advent of the embedding device model, optimal designs can now be obtained in a single simulation. This approach will be further applied in this proposal to multiple interconnected transistor circuits. With this embedding design approach, new broadband circuit topologies never conceived before can now be explored for achieving the highest performance possible for broadband 5G applications. This embedding design technique should also eventually facilitate the development of tools for the automatic design of optimal high-efficiency RF PAs. This paradigm shift in RF circuit design has the potential to unleash the true power of electronic design automation (EDA) tools in RF circuit design.