2010 Volume E93.C Issue 4 Pages 489-496
Nonlinear distortions in power amplifiers (PAs) generate spectral regrowth at the output, which causes interference to adjacent channels and errors in digitally modulated signals. This paper presents a novel method to evaluate adjacent channel leakage power ratio (ACPR) and error vector magnitude (EVM) from the amplitude-to-amplitude (AM/AM) and amplitude-to-phase (AM/PM) characteristics. The transmitted signal is considered to be complex Gaussian distributed in orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. We use the Mehler formula to derive closed-form expressions of the PAs output power spectral density (PSD), ACPR and EVM for memoryless PA and memory PA respectively. We inspect the derived relationships using an OFDM signal in the IEEE 802.11a WLAN standard. Simulation results show that the proposed method is appropriate to predict the ACPR and EVM values of the nonlinear PA output in OFDM systems, when the AM/AM and AM/PM characteristics are known.