Volume 31 Issue 1
Jan.  2022
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SU Jiangtao, CAI Jialing, ZHENG Xing, et al., “A Fast Two-Tone Active Load-Pull Algorithm for Assessing the Non-linearity of RF Devices,” Chinese Journal of Electronics, vol. 31, no. 1, pp. 25-32, 2022, doi: 10.1049/cje.2020.00.060
Citation: SU Jiangtao, CAI Jialing, ZHENG Xing, et al., “A Fast Two-Tone Active Load-Pull Algorithm for Assessing the Non-linearity of RF Devices,” Chinese Journal of Electronics, vol. 31, no. 1, pp. 25-32, 2022, doi: 10.1049/cje.2020.00.060

A Fast Two-Tone Active Load-Pull Algorithm for Assessing the Non-linearity of RF Devices

doi: 10.1049/cje.2020.00.060
Funds:  This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (61827806, 61871161) and Zhejiang Province Natural Science Foundation (LZ17F010001)
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  • Author Bio:

    (corresponding author) was born in 1981. He received the Ph.D. degree in electrical and electronic engineering from Cardiff University, UK, in 2011. He is curently an Associate Professor of Hangzhou Dianzi University, China. His research interests include nonlinear device characterization and modelling. (Email: jtsu@hdu.edu.cn)

  • Received Date: 2020-02-25
  • Accepted Date: 2021-07-02
  • Available Online: 2021-08-18
  • Publish Date: 2022-01-05
  • Radio frequency (RF) devices used in modern wireless systems must meet increasingly complicated spectral constraints while still operating with high power efficiency. A fast real-time two-tone active load-pull algorithm is proposed to assess the relationship between nonlinear performance with associated device load impedance variations. This algorithm employs real time measurement data to extract two-tone local nonlinear behaviour model, which is further used for the prediction of injected signal value in the active real-time load-pull system, therefore minimizing the number of iterations required for load emulation. The proposed method was validated on a real two-tone load-pull measurement bench using off-the-shelf instruments. The result shows that the measurement speed has been greatly increased without sacrifice of the impedance emulation accuracy. This intelligent two-tone load-pull algorithm is expected to be applied in the designing of modern communication system and radar transmitters, as well as the validation of the models of radio frequency transistors.
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