Statistics-Based Approach for Blind Post-Compensation of Modulator’s Imperfections and Power Amplifier Nonlinearity

Power amplifier (PA) nonlinearity and in-phase and quadrature-phase (I/Q) imbalance are major concerns for wireless transmitters. In this paper, we present a new closed-form expression for the probability density function (PDF) of I and Q components in the presence of transmitter’s impairments and propose a blind post-compensation approach for the mitigation of these impairments. These impairments include static PA nonlinearity and frequency-independent I/Q imbalance. The accuracy of the analytical PDF is evaluated using Kullback–Leibler divergence and Hellinger square distance. Simulation results show a reasonable correspondence between the derived PDF and non-parametric kernel density estimation-based PDF. After a closed-form PDF is obtained, higher order statistics-based method is used to estimate PA nonlinearity in the presence of I/Q impairments. Finally, a maximum-likelihood estimation of I/Q imbalance parameters is obtained using the analytical PDF. Simulation results show a normalized mean-squared error (NMSE) of around −40 dB and an adjacent channel power ratio of around −53 dBc, along with an error vector magnitude (EVM) of around 1%, for a 3-MHz local thermal equilibrium signal. Using laboratory measurements, an NMSE of around −35 dB and an EVM of 1.5% are achieved.