Advanced Power Amplifiers: DSP-implemented Drive-Modulated Kahn technique

In response to the Navy's call to advance RF power amplifier design techniques, the Offerors propose a DSP (Digital Signal Processor)-Implemented, Drive-Modulated (DIDM) Kahn technique to effectively reduce in-band and out-of-band distortion products and increase power efficiency in power amplifiers (PA). The Classic Kahn linearization technique is inherently highly adaptive, allowing its application to a great range of input waveforms and power active devices without design modifications. The introduction of Drive Modulation (DM) to the PA allows a higher average efficiency for input signals with high peak-to-average ratios, extending the advantages of the DIDM Kahn technique to a larger set of coding techniques. The implementation of the controls for the entire system with a DSP exploits the latest state-of-the-art advances in signal processing to ensure great accuracy in the linearization of amplifiers along with an instantaneous bandwidth up to few megahertz. The presence of the DSP increases the adaptability of this technique, freeing the linearized amplifier's design from its reliance on costly and time-consuming non-linear device modeling techniques. The generality of the approach suggested by the Offerors eases the commercial transition of the DIDM Kahn technique to a wide spectrum of evolving, consumer-level, lower-power and/or higher frequency systems.