The Predistortion System for an Ultrawideband RF Transmitter

The UWB standard became increasingly popular platform for implementing short range high data rate communication in various types of consumer electronic products. The need to maintain low power consumption while providing a reliable link justifies the development of a RF Transmitter Predistortion Linearization System, especially at the upper part of the useful frequency band of 6-10GHz, where larger propagation path loss and antenna interconnect losses are anticipated. The Tx Predistortion System allows an increase in the maximum usable linear power of the UWB transmitter on the order of 2-3dB. The digitally assisted analog baseband predistortion approach constitutes cost and power efficient method suitable for the commercial UWB chipset. This work reports design and performance of the transmitter linearization system using a baseband analog predistortion approach. The system is implemented as part of the commercial UWB transceiver chip in a 0.13um CMOS process.