IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 9, NO.
10, OCTOBER 2010
Design and Experimental Evaluation of a
LINC Transmitter for OFDM Systems
Paloma Garcı́a-Dúcar, Jesús de Mingo, Pedro Luis Carro, Member, IEEE, and Antonio Valdovinos
Abstract—The LInear amplification using Nonlinear Com-
ponents (LINC) technique is a well-known power amplifier
linearization method to reduce out-of-band interferences in a
nonconstant envelope modulation system. Its major drawback is
the inherent sensitivity to gain and phase imbalances between the
two amplifier branches. In this paper a digital correction method,
which corrects these gain and phase imbalances, is implemented
and verified. Commercial analog devices and a digital platform
for signal processing purposes are used. The experimental results
applied in an OFDM transmitter show a linearity improvement
close to 20 dB without reducing the output power and without
increasing the in-band distortion.
Index Terms—Amplifier linearization, OFDM, linear amplifi-
cation using nonlinear components (LINC).
I. I NTRODUCTION
T HE emergent telecommunication systems use spectral
efficient multilevel modulation formats together with
multicarrier schemes, such as OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency
Division Multiplexing) modulation. The OFDM transmission
is an efficient way to deal with multipath and its implemen-
tation is less complex than an equalizer. However, one of its
drawbacks is its sensitivity to nonlinear distortions, due to
its greatly variable envelope and high peak to mean envelope
power ratio values [1]. As a result of nonlinearity effects
(mainly from power amplifier), the transmission spectrum
is expanded into adjacent channels and the in-band distor-
tion increases. Different authors propose several linearizing
techniques for power amplifiers to improve the transmitter
linearity [2]-[5]. These techniques are usually categorized as
Feed-forward, Feedback, Predistortion and LINC transmitter,
where LINC is an acronym for LInear amplification with
Nonlinear Components. One of the main drawbacks of the
LINC transmitter is its inherited sensitivity to gain and phase
imbalances between the two amplifier branches [6]-[7]. Some
methods correct these imbalances [8]-[18], but most of them
are only theoretical studies and they are tested by computer
simulations. The analysis carried out in [11] applies a simplex
search algorithm to correct gain and phase imbalances using a
measurement of the spurious out-of-band, but the calibration
time is very long, approximately 1 to 2 seconds. A direct
search algorithm proposal [12] corrects only gain imbalances
and a method based on a complex gain baseband predistorter,
Manuscript received June 25, 2009; revised November 4, 2009 and April 8,
2010; accepted August 3, 2010. The associate editor coordinating the review
of this paper and approving it for publication was X. Ma.
The authors are with the Department of Electronic Engineering and
Communications, Aragon Institute of Engineering Research (I3A), Univer-
sity of Zaragoza, Zaragoza 50018, Spain (e-mail:{paloma, mingo, plcarro,
toni}@unizar.es).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TWC.2010.090210.090949
1536-1276/10$25.00 ⃝
2983
proposed in [14], compensates the phase and gain imbalances
between the two branches.
In addition, there are few studies including practical results.
The analogue method, proposed in [10], is only able to correct
phase imbalances and presents results for a narrowband signal.
Zhang et at. [13] use a background calibration algorithm
obtaining an improvement in the reduction of the adjacent
interference by 10 dB for a CDMA signal. Recent LINC
implementations are focused on the Chireix outphasing trans-
mitter, obtaining good results [15], [17]-[18]. Most of the im-
plemented methods have been verified either with narrowband
signals, such as 𝜋/4-DQPSK signal for TETRA or NADC
standard, or with a CDMA signal leading an improvement
lower than 15 dB. However, practical results with OFDM
modulation have not been widely shown. A LINC with linear
frequency translation applied to an OFDM signal, reducing
the spectral regrowth about 14 dB, is analized in [16].
This paper presents a final design and experimental im-
plementation of the adaptive digital linearization technique
described in [8]. A LINC transmitter structure is developed
by applying the proposed imbalance correction method and
then the system performance is evaluated using OFDM-type
signals in order to verify its effectiveness and usefulness.
One problem of the proposed method in [8] was to deal
with the misalignments in I/Q modulators and demodulator.
These imbalances cause a loss of orthogonality and create
intercarrier interference in an OFDM system and unwanted
spectral regrowth [19]-[20]. Thus, the digital stage integrates
quadrature modulator/demodulator in this implemented de-
sign. The proposed technique offers good performance with
low complexity. It is verified in a multicarrier transmitter,
using an OFDM signal, which presents a high peak to average
power ratio (PAPR).
II. C ORRECTION M ETHOD M ODEL
In a real implementation of a LINC transmitter, there are
several mechanisms that degrade the overall performance, such
as the power gain and the phase imbalance between the two
RF paths, the quadrature modulator errors and the error due
to the digital signal processing, e.g. quantization noise and
sampling rate error. They will cause incomplete cancellation
of unwanted elements in wideband phase modulated signals
and a large number of unwanted spurious products appear in
the output spectrum. Two of these effects are compensated in
the implementation of this prototype: power gain and phase
imbalances between the two RF paths, corrected by means
of the correction algorithm proposed in [8], and quadrature
modulator errors, solved using digital I/Q modulators in both
branches.
c 2010 IEEE
2984 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 9, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2010

Fig. 2. Experimental setup used to implement the proposed correction method

in a LINC transmitter.

According to Eq.(3), the input envelope is equal in both

Fig. 1. Implemented model.
Fig. 1 depicts a schematic diagram of the implemented
model. The source signal, 𝑠(𝑛), is split into two constant-
envelope signals, as it can be seen in Eq.(1), by a Signal
Component Separator block (SCS). We use 𝑠(𝑛)=𝑠(𝑡)𝑡=𝑛⋅𝑇𝑚
, being 𝑇𝑚 the sampling time, to describe the discrete version
of the source signal.
𝑠(𝑛) 𝑠(𝑛)
𝑠1 (𝑛) = [1 − 𝑒𝑠 (𝑛)] 𝑠2 (𝑛) = [1 + 𝑒𝑠 (𝑛)] , (1)
2 2
where 𝑒𝑠 (𝑛) is a signal that is in quadrature to the source
signal, 𝑠(𝑛) = 𝑐(𝑛)𝑒𝑗𝜌(𝑛) , and it is computed as
[ ] The inclusion, in the correction method, of two matching

 𝑐2
𝑒𝑠 (𝑛) = 𝑗 ⎷ 𝑚𝑎𝑥
2 −1 0 < 𝑐(𝑛) ≤ 𝑐𝑚𝑎𝑥 . (2)
∣𝑠(𝑛)∣
Thus
𝑠(𝑛) = 𝑠1 (𝑛) + 𝑠2 (𝑛) and ∣𝑠1 (𝑛)∣ = ∣𝑠2 (𝑛)∣ .
Different complex coefficients (K1 and K2 ), one for each
branch, multiply the constant-envelope signals, 𝑠1 (𝑛) and
𝑠2 (𝑛) and they are computed and continuously updated to
reduce the mean squared error by means of an adaptive
algorithm. The adaptation criterion is to minimize the mean-
squared-error. The error signal is the difference between the
source signal, properly delayed, and the feedback reference
signal, 𝑟(𝑛), of the output power amplifier signal
𝑒(𝑛) = 𝑠(𝑛 − 𝑛1 ) − 𝑟(𝑛)
where 𝑛1 is the estimated loop delay in an integer number
of the sampling time. The feedback signal is obtained down-
converting the output power amplifier signal, where 1/GL is
the downconversion gain, estimated as the inverse of total
equivalent linear gain of the amplifying branches, including
the output coupler gain
𝑠𝑜 (𝑛)
𝑟(𝑛) = GL = with a 105 MSPS sampling rate and as well as a dual channel
𝑠1 (𝑛)⋅K1 ⋅G1 (∣𝑠1 (𝑛)∣)+𝑠2 (𝑛)⋅K2 ⋅G2 (∣𝑠2 (𝑛)∣)
GL
where the amplifier of each path is characterized by a level-
dependent complex gain
G1 (∣𝑠1 (𝑛)∣) = M1 (∣𝑠1 (𝑛)∣) 𝑒𝑗Φ(∣𝑠1 (𝑛)∣) ,
G2 (∣𝑠2 (𝑛)∣) = M2 (∣𝑠2 (𝑛)∣) 𝑒𝑗Φ(∣𝑠2 (𝑛)∣) .
amplifiers, so G1 and G2 can be defined as a complex constant.
The gain imbalance, ΔM, and phase imbalance, ΔΦ, between
both amplifiers can be defined as the gain/phase imbalance of
the lower amplifier respect to the upper one, ΔΦ = Φ2 − Φ1 ,
ΔM = M2 /M1 .
As it can be seen in [8], the updated value of the adaptive
coefficient at discrete time 𝑛 + 1 is computed by the simple
recursive relation
Km (𝑛 + 1) = Km (𝑛) + 𝜇𝑚 ⋅ 𝑒(𝑛) ⋅ 𝑠∗𝑚 (𝑛) 𝑚 = 1, 2. (7)
where the positive real-valued constant 𝜇𝑚 (step-size), con-
trols the speed of convergence and the misadjustment (final
excess error) of the algorithm.
coefficients, K1 and K2 instead of one single coefficient, is
aimed to correct any phase and gain imbalances produced
between both amplifying branches, maintaining the output
mean power level in all situations, which is a necessary
(3) condition for any wireless transmitter.
III. C ORRECTION M ETHOD I MPLEMENTATION
A LINC prototype has been constructed to verify the
proposed correction method. Fig. 2 illustrates the experimental
setup used to implement the system. It consists of a digital
platform used to run the signal component separator block,
the correction algorithm and the digital I/Q modulator and
demodulator, followed by an analogue circuit, which includes
the two amplifying branches and a feedback branch.
(4) The digital development platform used for the implemen-
tation of digital signal processes consists of a main board
hosted on a PCI Carrier in a PC, which controls other two
boards, a Digital Signal Processing (DSP) module and a
Data Acquisition (DAQ) module. The DSP module comprises
a DSP TMS320C6416 (600 MHz fixed-point 64-bit) and a
FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array). The DAQ module
includes two 14-bit Analogue-to-Digital Converters (ADCs)
(5) Digital-to-Analogue Converter (DAC) for converting up to 400
MSPS into analogue signals. The digital stage generates, codes
and modulates the base-band OFDM signal. The software
can be used as a signal generator, capable of providing any
quadrature amplitude modulated signal. It is possible to create
a user-defined signal, selecting all parameters corresponding to
(6) an OFDM-signal or to choose a defined-signal corresponding
to standards such as DVB-T or WiMAX.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 9, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2010
Fig. 3. Experimental output spectrum for an OFDM signal with the following
transmitter scheme: (a) with a single amplifying branch (without LINC
transmitter) (b) with LINC transmitter but without imbalances correction
method between amplifying branches and (c) with LINC transmitter and
applying the proposed correction method.
This signal is separated into two constant-envelope signals,
𝑠1 (𝑛) and 𝑠2 (𝑛), which are IF-modulated by an internal digital
I/Q modulator afterwards. These signals are sent continuously
to the dual channel DAC. Intermediate frequency modulation
is optional and baseband signals can also be outputted in I/Q
format.
The output signals of the DACs are amplified by both
IF amplifiers, one in each branch, and then are fed to the
up-conversion stage. Finally, the power stage amplifies both
signals. It consists of a driver amplifier and a power amplifier,
having a nominal 29 dBm 1-dB compression point and a 27
dB gain. The amplified signals in both branches are combined
by means of a power combiner. The correction method needs
a reference from the output signal, which is compared with
the input signal obtaining an error signal (to be minimized).
The reference signal is taken from the transmitter output
using a coupler and, after an appropriate attenuation and
downconversion, is sampled by the ADC. The IF sampled
signal is converted to baseband in the digital domain by an
internal quadrature demodulator and afterwards, the correction
algorithm is carried out. The digital stage performs also all
synchronization tasks between forward and feedback branches.
IV. E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS
A. Output Transmitter Performance
The correction method described in [8] by the authors and
showed in Fig. 1 is implemented in this prototype. One of its
advantages is that a calibration signal is not necessary since
the correction method runs in background while the system is
transmitting.
The experimental setup has been tested with several OFDM
source signals, varying their main parameters: number of
subcarriers, QPSK, 16-QAM or 64-QAM constellation, use-
ful symbol duration and guard time. They present a PAPR
between 9 and 11 dB.
Fig. 3 shows the experimental output spectrum in three
situations: with a single amplifying branch, that is, without
2985
a LINC transmitter structure, with a LINC transmitter but
without any imbalance correction method, and finally, with a
LINC transmitter after the proposed correction. The reduction
in the adjacent channel power ratio (ACPR) value at an
offset frequency of 2 MHz using the proposed adaptive LINC
transmitter in contrast to a single amplifying branch is nearly
20 dB, with the same output mean power in both cases (Pout
=18.6 dBm). The source signal is an OFDM signal with
200 subcarriers, a 2-MHz bandwidth, a 64-QAM modulation
and 117 𝜇s of symbol time (PAPR=9.4dB). All experimental
output spectrum measurements have been taken with a 30 dB
attenuator in the input of the spectrum analyzer so as not to
damage it.
If an out-of-band interference level similar to that obtained
with the proposed LINC is desired with a single amplifier,
it has to operate with a high Output Back-Off (OBO). This
implies very low power efficiency. Fig. 4 shows the exper-
imental output spectrum for different OBO values with a
single amplifying branch, that is, without a transmitter LINC
structure. According to Fig. 3 and Fig. 4, the output mean
power is 6 dB lower in a single amplifier structure than in
the proposed LINC structure if an ACPR value less than
−42 dB at an offset frequency of 2 MHz is desired. In
order to obtain the same performance of the proposed LINC
scheme, regarding linearity (ACPR) and mean output power,
another different power amplifier working in linear zone will
be necessary to include in the transmitter stage, with the
consequent waste of efficiency. Therefore, with the proposed
method, good linearity, without reducing the output power, can
be obtained.
The disadvantage of the suggested method is the inclusion
of two amplifying branches, and therefore, twice as much
dc power consumption. However, this does not necessarily
imply a low power efficiency, because it depends on both
the dc power consumption and the output power. One of the
drawbacks of the LINC transmitter is that most of the RF
power is in the distortion signal 𝑒𝑠 (𝑛), defined in Eq.(2),
which is cancelled in the combiner. Thus, applications with
large PAPR experience a significant loss in power efficiency.
The power combining with a hybrid combiner causes power
efficiency degradation whereas a nonisolated combiner causes
linearity degradation [21]. Hence, there is a trade-off between
efficiency and linearity, depending on which type of combiner
is used. Although the power combining issue is not considered
in this paper, which is focused on the validation of the
mismatch digital correction method, an interesting proposal
for improving the overall efficiency using hybrid combining
is suggested in [22] using a power-recycling method.
The reduction of the out-of-band distortion has been veri-
fied. Thus, the error vector magnitude (EVM) is also measured
to take into account the influence of the suggested method on
the in-band distortion. The EVM measurement for a Pout =18.6
dBm is similar in both schemes, even improving slightly when
the proposed method is applied: EVM ≈ 9.2% with a single
structure and EVM ≈ 8.5% with the suggested LINC. It
has to be taken into account that the power amplifying stage
introduces an EVM ≈ 6% for obtaining the desired output
mean power.
2986 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 9, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2010

−6

−16

−26

−36

−46
Magnitude [dBm]

a)

−56 b)
c)
−66 d)

e)
−76

−86

−96

−106
455 457 459 461 463 465 467 469 471 473 475
Frequency [MHz]

Fig. 4. Experimental output spectrum for an OFDM signal with a single

amplifying branch for different OBO values. a) Pout =18.6 dBm, b) Pout =17.3 Fig. 6. Experimental output spectrum in a LINC transmitter for a DVB-T
dBm, c) Pout =15.7 dBm, d) Pout =13.7 dBm, e) Pout =12.3 dBm, Span: 20 signal before (color black) and after the correction method (color grey). Pout
MHz, RBW: 300 KHz. Reference level −6 dBm. ATT=30 dB. [7.61MHz]=19 dBm.

1.2
the correction circuit has to be estimated before introducing
the adaptive algorithm. An accurate delay matching is im-
1
portant to improve the performance of this approach. The
experimental correction method starts with a calibration signal
0.8
to estimate this loop delay.
Im[K ]
0.6 1
C. Other Applications
Magnitude

0.4
0.2
0 decreasing the in-band output mean power. Therefore, both
−0.2
70 140
samples
Fig. 5. Value range of adaptive coefficients, K1 and K2 .
B. Convergence Rate
The convergence rate can be measured by analyzing the
time evolution of the mean-squared-error. The step size pa-
rameter (𝜇𝑛 =0.1) has been properly chosen in order to reduce
the out-of-band spurious, ensuring the convergence algorithm
and with a fast convergence rate. Fig. 5 shows the evolution
of the real and imaginary part of the coefficients, K1 and K2 .
The average convergence time, with the above defined OFDM
signal, is less than 140 samples, that corresponds to 1 𝜇s for a
sampling frequency 140 MHz, which is much lower than the
symbol time.
An important issue in the practical implementation of this
scheme, as described in [7], is the loop delay. The feedback
signal is a delayed and attenuated version of the amplifier
output signal. The delay must be compensated for the adaptive
algorithm to correctly compare the source signal, 𝑠(𝑛), with
the feedback signal, 𝑟(𝑛). Therefore, the delay produced by
Re[K ]
2
Im[K2] Fig. 6 shows the experimental results for a DVB-T signal
Re[K1]
(8k mode, symbol time of 1120 𝜇s, modulation format 64-
QAM) with a PAPR of 10.8 dB [23] before and after ap-
plying the correction method. The improvement regarding the
reduction of the out-of-band interference is significant without
power and spectral efficiency are achieved using the proposed
method.
210 280 350
V. C ONCLUSIONS
The applicability of an adaptive digital amplifier lineariza-
tion method for OFDM transmission systems, has been in-
vestigated, implemented and verified. It is based on a LINC
transmitter scheme including a correction algorithm to reduce
the nonlinear distortion. The presented method corrects the
undesirable gain and phase imbalances, which appear between
amplifying branches in LINC transmitters. The experimental
LINC transmitter, together with the digital correction method,
has been implemented and tested for different OFDM signals,
obtaining good performance with low complexity. Experi-
mental results demonstrate that it is possible to reduce the
ACPR between 10 and 20 dB in a system with a multicarrier
modulation, without decreasing the output mean power and
without introducing the in-band distortion. As a result of its
adaptive technique, this method can track the input signal
variations and possible changes in operating conditions.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work has been financed by the Spanish Government
(Project TEC2008-06684-C03-02/TEC from MICINN and
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 9, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2010
FEDER), Gobierno de Aragón (Project PI003/08 and WALQA
Technology Park), and the European IST Project EUWB.
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