Data-based pre-distortion for nonlinear power amplifier

A system, comprising:

• a digital pre-distortion (DPD) component comprising a DPD processor and a DPD calibration processor, wherein the DPD processor is configured to apply a set of DPD coefficients to a digital baseband data signal, to generate a pre-distorted digital baseband data signal for conversion to a radio frequency (RF) signal and amplification by a nonlinear power amplifier (PA) to generate an RF output signal, wherein the RF output signal is output to an antenna for transmission;
• and
• a coupler configured to sample the RF output signal to generate a second RF output signal, wherein the DPD calibration processor is configured to:
• compare a digitized, down-converted version of the second RF output signal with the digital baseband data signal, to determine distortion coefficients of the nonlinear PA, wherein frames of the digitized, down-converted version of the second RF output signal and the digital baseband data signal are aligned using a separate dedicated buffer for each prior to the comparison, and wherein transmission of the RF output signal is not interrupted by transmission of non-data calibration signals;
• and
• update the set of pre-distortion coefficients in the DPD processor to compensate for the distortion of the non-linear PA.

A digital pre-distortion (DPD) processing component, comprising:

• a quadrature modulator configured to receive a transmit data frame and to gene rate a symbol stream, wherein the transmit data frame comprises information to be transmitted to a receiver device;
• an inverse fast Fourier transform (IFFT) block coupled to the quadrature modulator, configured to generate a digital baseband data signal;
• a DPD calibration processor coupled to the IFFT block, configured to compare the digital baseband data signal from the quadrature modulator with a distorted version of the digital baseband data signal, and to generate DPD coefficients based on the comparison, wherein frames of the digital baseband data signal and the distorted version of the digital baseband data signal are aligned using a separate dedicated buffer for each prior to the comparison, and wherein transmission of the digital baseband data signal is not interrupted by transmission of non-data calibration signals;
• and
• a DPD processor configured to receive the digital baseband data signal from the quadrature modulator and to pre-distort the digital baseband data signal using the DPD coefficients to compensate for the nonlinear distortions of the PA.