A Circuit-Inspired Digital Predistortion of Supply Network Effects for Capacitive RF-DACs

This article presents a novel digital predistortion (DPD) approach to compensate for nonlinear dynamic distortions caused by the supply network of capacitive radio frequency digital-to-analog converters (RF-DACs). The developed DPD concept recreates the voltage distortion on the RF-DAC’s supply network and modulates the input signal such that the effects on the output signal of the RF-DAC are canceled. In contrast to conventional DPD approaches such as pruned Volterra series or memory polynomials, the complexity of the proposed concept is reduced to a feasible level, allowing for implementation in integrated circuits. Furthermore, the derived DPD model allows to use linear estimation algorithms for coefficient training. The presented DPD is demonstrated by measurements of two different capacitive RF-DAC designs and compared with conventional DPD approaches. EVM and adjacent channel power ratio (ACPR) can be improved by up to 6 and 7 dB, respectively, outperforming conventional approaches.