Impact of efficient power amplifiers in wireless access

Energy consumption of next generation radio access network is posing a deep impact on CO2 emission and network operating cost. In a macro site, radio equipment dominates the power consumption. Specifically, the power amplifiers consume 70% of the total input power. In case of WCDMA and OFDMA, the Traditional Power Amplifier (TPA) suffers from low efficiency due to the non-constant envelope signals. To improve efficiency in case of these kinds of signals, deployment of Envelope Tracking Power Amplifier (ET-PA) is a viable solution. In this paper, the efficiency vs. output power characteristics of the ET-PA has been modeled. Moreover, by carrying out system level simulation in WCDMA network scenario, we show that 7–15% energy can be saved by replacing TPA by ET-PA.

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