Power amplifier behavioral modeling performance comparison of the LSNA and the modulation-domain system

The performance of power amplifier behavioral models depends strongly on the performance of the system used to measure the amplifiers. In this study two different systems with nonlinear measurement capability are used to model a commercially available PA. One system is a large-signal network analyzer (LSNA) and the second system is a modulation-domain system (MDS) consisting of a vector signal generator and a vector signal analyzer. The PA was tested with multitone and WCDMA signals and behavioral models were extracted from the measured data. The evaluation criteria normalized mean square error and weighted error spectral power ratio or adjacent channel error power ratio were then computed to compare the performance of the models from the two systems. Cross-validation between the systems, using data from one system to obtain the model and validating its performance with data from the other system, shows that the model performance is mainly affected by the used validation data. Validating the performance of models from the LSNA with data from the MDS indicates that the identified models have almost the same performance as the MDS-identified models, i.e. it does not matter which system is used to identify the models. Cross-validation using a WCDMA-signal and multitone signal from the different systems shows that the normalized mean square error is mainly affected by modeling imperfections introduced by using another signal type. WESPR and ACEPR show a certain difference in performance with somewhat lower values for the MDS. The behavior of the two systems can be explained by different noise levels.