Linearization of traveling-wave tube amplifiers using digitally supported signal injection technique

Abstract

This paper presents a digitally supported signal injection technique for the intermodulation distortion terms (IMDs) resulting from the non-linearity of Traveling-wave tube amplifiers. It is shown that the state-of-the art analog techniques have inherent limitation due to the inaccuracy of analog components. The proposed technique provides more accurate cancellation of third-order IMD as compared to its analog counterpart. Moreover, it is shown that the presented technique can be easily extended to compensate for higher order IMDs simultaneously.

Keywords:

• Gain and phase expansion
• non-linear distortion
• predistortion linearizer
• traveling-wave tube amplifier (TWTA)
• signal injection

Notes

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO), India [grant number ERIP/ER/1400477/M/01]. The authors are thankful to Dr. Karun Rawat, Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering for his valuable suggestions.