WeIF1-17
Investigation on a Desirable DPD Architecture and Trapping
Characteristics for GaN Power Amplifier Linearization
P. Song, Z. Mokhti, Q. Mu
Wolfspeed, Morgan Hill, CA, USA
{philip.song, zul.mokhti, qianli.mu}@wolfspeed.com
Abstract— A 2-level digital predistortion (DPD), a simplified
version of a piecewise DPD, is designed and used to verify that a
piecewise DPD is effective in linearizing typical GaN devices in
industry that exhibit low power distortions due to trapping. A
further investigation is taken to understand the device
characteristics that are favored by a piecewise DPD by
characterizing various devices.
2021 IEEE/MTT-S International Microwave Symposium - IMS 2021 | 978-1-6654-0307-8/21/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/IMS19712.2021.9574877
Keywords— piecewise DPD, 2-level DPD, GaN power
amplifiers, trapping, memory effect, GMP.
I. INTRODUCTION
Following the advancements in communication systems
such as mMIMO (massive multiple-input multiple-output) and
active phased array, power amplifiers (PAs) are moving
towards the direction of smaller physical size with higher
integration and a larger number of elements where each element
can work for wider signal bandwidth. Such system-level
development is particularly important for modern commercial
communication infrastructure systems, like 5G, which enables
wider data bandwidth and larger coverage capacity.
Power amplifiers based on GaN technology serve as good
candidates for such applications due to its advantages on power
density and efficiency. However, trapping effect in GaN high
electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) causes challenges to
incumbent linearization techniques. Trapping causes dynamic
gain collapses during PA operation under modulated signals,
which makes it difficult to fit the gain responses to memory
polynomials for digital pre-distortion (DPD). Such dynamic
gain collapse behaviour could lead to poor EVM performance,
especially when operating under high PAPR signal conditions,
like ETM2a signal. This dynamic gain collapse behaviour in
GaN HEMT is related to trapping consistency and trapping
capture and release time constants.
In this paper, the discussion is focused on trapping release,
or recovery, time constant. For long trapping release time
constant, more than 100ms, trapping impact on gain collapse is
relatively stable. Piecewise DPD can be more effective on
correcting such gain response than a regular memory
polynomial DPD is. Piecewise DPD is a proven DPD technique
but may not be widely used because popular devices such as
LDMOS (laterally diffused metal oxide semiconductor) and
GaAs (gallium arsenide) are not impacted by trapping from
linearity aspect and do not have such gain response that needs
a piecewise DPD.
A piecewise DPD has been tried on GaN PAs [1, 3], as the
authors noted that the stronger nonlinearity from GaN requires
a better linearization technique. The references focus on the
piecewise DPD technique itself. Further improvements can be
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made from understanding the GaN trapping characteristics and
making it favourable for piecewise DPD.
To verify that piecewise DPD is effective for GaN and to
investigate if certain GaN device characteristics can work better
with piecewise DPD, a 2-level DPD test bench is designed
using MATLAB, which is a simplified version of piecewise
DPD. Two groups of GaN devices that have different trapping
characteristics typically encountered in the marketplace are
tested in a Doherty circuit using both 2-level and GMP DPDs,
and results are compared.
II. PIECEWISE DPD ADVANTAGES FOR GAN
Most DPD focuses on correcting the high-power
compression as it is the primary source for distortion in power
amplifiers. For GaN power amplifiers, trapping causes an
additional non-linearity which is more prominent in low power
regions, and it is difficult for a DPD to correct both the low
power and high power non linearities in a single model. A
piecewise DPD can be effective in correcting devices with such
distortions because it can separately model the non-linearities
in each power region.
One of the challenges in piecewise DPD is handling
memory effects in different power segments. However, for GaN
HEMTs with long trapping release time constant, this may not
be a big concern. The trap release is much slower than typical
IQ sampling rates, and such a long-term memory effect
correction is not effective with a DPD [4]. Therefore, it is
possible, for such GaN PA, to simplify the piecewise DPD
structure by excluding the memory effect correction and relying
on other system level solutions to handle the long-term memory
effects.
III. PIECEWISE DPD VERIFICATION TESTS
A. Test setup
A simplified version of the piecewise DPD, which we call
2-level DPD, is designed to divide the power into two ranges
and extract DPD coefficients separately for each region as there
is no commercially available piecewise DPD. A test bench
equipped with the 2-level DPD is used to experimentally
confirm that a piecewise DPD can be effective for a GaN power
amplifier and to study the device characteristics that a
piecewise DPD favours.
The tests were done using an ETM2a waveform, which is a
3GPP-defined test waveform that has alternating 2 or 3 low
power data symbols and a high-power sync symbol as in Fig. 1.
The impact on the low power symbols by trapping is of great
531 2021 IEEE/MTT-S International Microwave Symposium
interest, and EVMs are of primary interest, rather than ACLR B. Test Results
which is dominated by high power symbols. Fig. 3 compares the linearity of the first and second groups
of the devices when using the 2-level DPD and GMP
(generalized memory polynomial) DPD. The plots show the
rms EVM for each of the 140 symbols, which is equivalent to
10mS. The average and max rms symbol EVM for different
cases are compared and summarized in Table 1.
Group 2, which has a larger static gain drop and a smaller
dynamic gain variation, shows significant improvement using
the 2-level DPD over the GMP DPD. No noticeable
improvement is seen for Group 1 devices from using 2-level
DPD against GMP DPD in terms of corrected EVMs.
Fig. 1. ETM2a test waveform over one frame (10mS or 140 symbols)

Two groups of devices, 5 for each, are selected which have

clearly different trap characteristics for this investigation and
tested in a 2-way symmetric Doherty at 2.6GHz. Group 1 has a
smaller static gain drop and a larger dynamic gain variation.
Devices from this group have ~10ms trap release time constant
at room temperature from PIV based transient current
measurement. The static gain drop is the average gain drop over
the period of time observed, and the dynamic gain variation is
the instantaneous gain variations around the average gain drop,
indicating gain stability vs time. Trap release time constant is
defined as time t that gives max ( ) in the Id recovery curve.
(a)
Group 2 has a larger static gain drop and a smaller dynamic gain
variation. They have ~200ms trap release time constant at room
temperature.
The static gain drops and the trap release time constants for
Group 1 and Group 2 devices are illustrated in Fig. 2.

(b)

(a) Fig. 3. Corrected EVM for 2-level DPD vs GMP DPD: (a) on Group 1 devices
(smaller static gain drop and larger dynamic gain variation); (b) on Group 2
devices (larger static gain drop and smaller dynamic gain variation)

Table 1. EVM comparisons between 2-level DPD vs GMP DPD on Group 1

and 2 devices
GMP DPD 2-level DPD
Max rms Avg rms Max rms Avg rms
symbol symbol symbol symbol
EVM EVM EVM EVM
Group 1 7.9% 4.9% 7.6% 5.1%
Group 2 8.7% 5.6% 5.0% 2.7%
(b)
Fig. 2. static gain drops and the trap release time constants: (a) Static gain drops C. Analysis
of Group 1 and 2 devices; (b) Quiescent drain current recovery and release time
constant τ of Group 1 and 2 devices when pulsed to (-8V,100V) for 50us. The test results indicate that piecewise DPD may not offer
an advantage over GMP if the dynamic gain variation is large,

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i.e. if the gain drop consistency is not good. An advanced DPD
such as piecewise DPD can correct a more serious non-linear
distortion but cannot do much if the distortion is not consistent
over time or is not predictable.
The gain drop versus time plots for Group 1 and Group 2
devices are shown in Fig. 4, which helps to understand why a
piecewise DPD is not effective for a device that has a larger
dynamic gain variation. The gain variations shown in the plots
are due to the long-term memory effect related to trapping, and
most sample based DPD is not effective in correcting long term
memory effect.
The best way forward to minimize such gain variation is in
the device technology. Fig. 4b for Group 2 devices show less
variation and as a result, better linearization with the 2-level
DPD compared to Group 1 devices which have a larger
variation. Note that if it were not for 2-level DPD, Group 2
would not demonstrate better linearization due to more severe
static gain drop, but the static gain drop is well handled by 2-
level DPD even if it is large.
(a)
(b)
Fig. 4. Dynamic gain variation (or gain drop consistency): (a) Group 1 devices;
(b) Group 2 devices.
The larger dynamic gain variation of Group 1 devices is fast
trap release time constant related. The release action is more
clearly seen in low power bursts, which are 140uS or 210uS
long, corresponding to 2 or 3 symbol lengths, in ETM2a
waveform. Since the gain recovers faster, it rises more during
the low power bursts resulting in larger gain variation.
However, there are other factors that affect the dynamic
gain variation. Although Group 2 in Fig. 4b shows less gain
variation related to the trap release speed, another type of
variation is related to the amplitude of the high-power bursts;
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the gain in a low power burst drops more when the preceding
high power burst has a higher amplitude. It indicates that not
only the trap release speed but also the static gain drop if it is
too big can cause a significant enough dynamic gain variation.
IV. SUMMARY
Piecewise DPD is suitable for devices that have
nonlinearities over a large power range such as GaN because it
can model each power segment separately. To prove the
effectiveness of piecewise DPD, a simplified version, 2-level
DPD, is designed and tested. The data shows that 2-level DPD
can achieve linearized average EVM around 2.5% vs. 5% when
GMP is used.
But not both groups of GaN devices that we tested showed
good improvements with 2-level DPD. Group1 devices have
faster trap release time constant, which leads to larger dynamic
gain variation under large PAPR signals, like ETM2a. The
longer trap release time constant of Group 2 devices helps to
reduce dynamic gain variation. Therefore, 2-level DPD is more
effective on improving its linearity.
A piecewise DPD can linearize PAs that have large static
gain drop but not ones with large dynamic gain variations. On
the other hand, designing GaN devices to have slower trap
release time constants can improve linearization when
piecewise DPD is used. However, trap release time constant is
not the only parameter that needs to get attention to when
reducing trapping impacts from GaN HEMTs on PA’s linearity.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors gratefully acknowledge the encouragement and
support of B.Noori, J.Fisher, J.Wood, and H.Jang and
appreciate technical discussions.
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