We propose a radio-over-fiber (RoF) system with 1-bit outphasing modulation. The proposed RoF system does not require a power-hungry digital-to-analog converter in access points and relaxes the operation speed of optical transceivers to reduce device cost. We introduce two configurations to enable 1-bit outphasing modulation in our system; mixed-signal and all-digital configurations. In the mixed-signal configuration, the effects of harmonics and phase/amplitude mismatch on the adjacent channel leakage ratio (ACLR) were analyzed through simulation, and wideband transmission with a signal bandwidth of 400 MHz was experimentally verified, complying with the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standard for millimeter-wave band. Moreover, wide-band transmission with a signal bandwidth of 1 GHz was also experimentally verified for beyond-5G and 6G. The all-digital configuration can be implemented in a standard digital design flow. This configuration was also verified to comply with the 3GPP standard by properly selecting the intermediate and sampling frequencies to mitigate the effects of folded harmonics and quantization noise. Finally, the proposed RoF system with both configurations has been shown to have a higher bandwidth efficiency compared with other systems complying with the 3GPP standard for the ACLR. Therefore, the proposed RoF system provides a cost-effective in-building wireless solution for 5G and 6G mobile network systems.

For improving the fifth-generation mobile communication system, a highly efficient power amplifier must be designed for the base station. An outphasing amplifier is expected to be a solution for achieving high efficiency. We designed a combiner, one of the key components of the outphasing amplifier, using a serial Chireix combiner and fabricated an amplifier with a GaN HEMT, achieving 70% or more high efficiency up to 9 dB back-off power in an 800 MHz band. We also fabricated a 2 GHz-band outphasing amplifier with the same design. We applied digital predistortion (DPD) to control the balance of amplifying units in this amplifier and achieved an average efficiency of 65% under a 20 MHz modulation bandwidth.

With the advent of 5G and external pressure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, wireless transceivers with low power consumption are strongly desired for future cellular systems. At the same time, increased modulation order due to the evolution of cellular systems will force power amplifiers to operate at much larger output power back-off to prevent EVM degradation. This paper begins with an analysis of load modulation and asymmetrical Doherty amplifiers. Measurement results will show an apparent 60% efficiency plateau for modulated signals with a large peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR). To exceed this efficiency limitation, the second part of this paper focuses on a new amplification topology based on the amalgamation between Doherty and outphasing. Measurement results of the proposed Doherty-outphasing power amplifier (DOPA) will confirm the feasibility of the approach with a modulated efficiency greater than 70% measured at 10 dB output power back-off.

Power amplifiers (PAs) are key components of mobile base stations. In the last decade, the power efficiency of PAs for 3G/4G mobile base stations has risen to over 50% as a result of employing efficiency enhancement techniques, such as Doherty, envelope tracking, and outphasing, in combination with GaN devices and digital predistortion. This trend has significantly contributed to reducing the power consumption of mobile base stations. Furthermore, digital transmitters using switch-mode PAs have the potential of breaking through the 70% efficiency level. Achieving this goal will require advances not only in circuitry but also in device technology. For active antenna systems of 5G mobile systems, ease of integration, as well as high efficiency, becomes important for PAs, and thus, Si-based devices will play a major role.

This paper suggests an outphasing scheme to reduce adjacent channel spectral regrowth triggered by the gain and phase mismatch between two signal paths in linear amplification with nonlinear component (LINC) systems. The error vector magnitude and power spectral density of the output signal considering path mismatch are described analytically using path mismatch factor. An outphasing scheme is proposed to reduce the spectral regrowth. The proposed outphasing scheme reshapes the phases of the separated signals in LINC systems to reduce the changes of the phases. Its performance is verified by performing simulations with multi-tone signals. The result shows that the scheme can reduce the spectral regrowth of the multi-tone signals significantly compared to the conventional outphasing scheme for LINC systems with path imbalance.