Award year: 2019
Category: Other Award
Awarding organization: IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S)
In the area of mobile communications, Thomas Ackermann and Julian Potschka and Tim Maiwald won the Power Amplifier Linearization through Digital Pre-Distortion (DPD) competition against two other opponents. The goal of the challenge was to design an algorithm for pre-distorting a 2-channel MIMO transmitter with cross-coupling effect in order to maximize the linearity of the overall system. The system consisted of two GaN HEMT Doherty power amplifiers and a coupler to control the crosstalk between the two PAs. The team implemented a cascaded polynomial model that reduced unwanted static and dynamic effects as well as crosstalk between the two PAs, optimizing the overall performance of the system.