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Switch-Type Modulators and PAs For Efficient Transmitters in The 5G Wireless Infrastructure
Switch-Type Modulators and PAs For Efficient Transmitters in The 5G Wireless Infrastructure
Abstract—This paper discusses envelope-tracking solutions and high-electron-mobility transistors (HEMTs) based on GaN
for broadband mm-wave transmitters as required in future 5G technology offer unprecedented high-speed power-switching
base stations. The unique feature is to use switch-type circuits properties for this purpose and are the key components for the
based on GaN devices in the modulators. Starting from state-of- success of this topology.
the-art results in the 2 GHz band, the potential of advanced
solutions for 30 GHz transmitters with bandwidths beyond 1 The results are used to extrapolate the potential one has for
GHz is discussed. Both discrete-level class-G and class-S 5G mm-wave PAs in the 20…30 GHz band with bandwidths
modulators are considered. of 1 GHz and more. As an alternative, the usage of a class-S
digital PA for the supply modulator is discussed. Both
Keywords—5G, envelope tracking, class-G, class-S, GaN power approaches are based on switch-type modulators.
amplifier.
II. BROADBAND ENVELOPE TRACKING AT 2 GHZ
I. INTRODUCTION
The conventional ET approach employs an analog
The power amplifier (PA) is still one of the most critical modulator to control the supply voltage of the RF PA. This
hardware components in mobile communications transceivers. minimizes the difference between the envelope and the actual
The requirements combine specs on output power, energy supply voltage. However, the analog operation of the
efficiency, and linearity, which are challenging to meet. This is modulator comes at the cost of power dissipation, particularly
true for the handset as well as for the base station side, with if the envelope bandwidth grows. This can be improved if the
different implications. Today's spectrum-efficient modulation modulator is realized as a switch, which delivers only discrete
schemes result in signals with high peak-to-average power values of supply voltage, as illustrated in Fig. 1.
ratio (PAPR), which strongly degrades energy efficiency of
conventional PAs and has required introduction of advanced
solutions such as Doherty already in the present base-station
transmitters.
Moving towards 5G, the challenge is to cope with the
increased bandwidth and the higher carrier frequency while
maintaining efficiency, particularly when dealing with the new
mm-wave bands. Both, bandwidth and frequency are about a
factor of 10 larger than in the present 4G solutions. This cannot
be accomplished by simple scaling but needs a more
comprehensive development. The major part of research work
on efficiency enhancement so far has been devoted to the
Fig. 1. Supply voltage against time for a simple class-G modulation with
Doherty approach, to envelope tracking (ET), and the three voltage levels (simplified presentation).
outphasing concepts. Among them, only the Doherty PA has
found widespread use in today's base stations, mainly because Our recent results (see [3]) document that the discrete-level
it offers a simple plug-in solution for the existing base-station ET outperforms its continuous counterparts in terms of
architecture, while ET and outphasing require additional efforts bandwidth. 120 MHz of IQ bandwidth have been demonstrated
to provide the appropriate input signals. However, this is not a while previous conventional ET solutions (see [3] and [4])
prejudice for the 5G wireless infrastructure since new cover only 80 and 20 MHz, respectively. The modulator has an
transceiver architectures have to be developed anyway. uncomplicated topology and consists of two GaN HEMTs and
This situation is the motivation behind this paper. As the two GaN Schottky diodes in the final stage (see Fig. 2), which
starting point, a review of the state-of-the-art in broadband ET allows to address three voltage levels that can be chosen freely.
in the 2 GHz band is presented. The results show that using Although discretization results in increased voltage overhead
discrete levels for the supply voltage (often referred to as class- and accompanied energy dissipation (see grey areas in Fig. 1),
G) outperforms continuous supply modulation for high the corresponding degradation in overall efficiency remains
bandwidths. In this case, the modulator shrinks to a very fast small, if the voltage levels are chosen properly, and it is more
but simple multilevel switch. The available Schottky diodes
This work was supported by the German DFG under grant BE 5397/1-1
and by the Leibniz Association through the project "Digital Power Amplifier".
978-1-5386-1197-5/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE
than compensated by the improvements due to the switch commercial components. The design of the bias supply
operation of the transistors in the modulators. network of the RF PA and the interconnect between the PA
and the modulator is critical and can cause severe degradations
Because the GaN HEMTs are available as n-channel in switching speed of the overall system.
devices only, the floating source potential of the GaN-based
ET topology presents a problem for the gate driver. In our case,
isolated gate drivers with commercial digital isolators and III. EXTRAPOLATION TO THE 5G CASE AT 20…30 GHZ
custom low-power DC-DC converters are applied, which Extending the ET solutions described before to the 5G
provide LVDS- and CMOS-compatible digital interfaces at the scenario in the mm-wave bands in the range 20…30 GHz with
driver input. multi-antenna arrays, one faces two main challenges:
V3 V2 V1 • The efficiency of the RF PA with acceptable gain at peak
discrete supply voltage
gate nominal power reduces from values around 60% to less
driver D1 D2 V3 than 40%. This significantly compromises overall
G //2
T1 T2 V2 efficiency.
S S V1 • With IQ bandwidths of 1 GHz and more, modulator speed
must be increased by almost an order of magnitude
RF choke compared to the realizations so far. This has
RF input PA RF output consequences for final-stage transistors and diodes, but
also for the gate driver and the network between the
modulator and the output transistor of the mm-wave PA.
On the other hand, due to the MIMO concept, the typical
RF peak output power decreases from 80 W to less than 8 W.
This means that one can reduce the size (i.e., the gate width) of
the output transistor(s) in the RF PA accordingly. More
detailed considerations show that reducing the output power by
a factor of ten allows shrinking device size to 13%, which also
means that the PA needs less supply current. Hence, the final-
stage transistors and diodes in the modulator can be scaled
down as well, which relaxes the requirements regarding the
higher speed, at least partly.
Fig. 2. The class-G system with three-level supply modulator according to
[1]: block diagram (top) and realized module (bottom). 12 50
Transducer Gain* (dB)