Circuit/system design space characterization of EER-based transmitter for 802.11a WLAN standard

Abstract

Due to the increase of required bandwidth, the newer generation of communication systems uses spectrum-efficient digital modulations that involve non-constant envelope RF signals. A technique that potentially can concurrently provide high efficiency and linearity is the Envelope Elimination and Restoration (EER) transmitter architecture which is based on the decomposition of the transmitted signal in a broadband baseband envelope (processed by an envelope-tracking switching power converter) and a narrowband phase-modulated signal (processed by a class-E switch-mode RFPA) and the subsequent restoration (through wideband adaptive RF PA supply). In this work, a behavioral system-level characterization of how circuitlevel effects (namely limited bandwidth and switching effects) affect the overall communication system performance metrics (characterized by spectra, eye diagrams, signal constellations, EVM and BER) of a 802.11a WLAN system is presented.