Automatic calibration of the quadrature balance within a cartesian amplifier.

摘要

A Cartesian amplifier in which an input signal is pre-processed and split into two quadrature components. Both quadrature components are passed, in parallel, through an error amplifier (4), after which they are re-combined and up-converted to RF. The output of the amplifier is used to provide a feedback signal. This feedback is downconverted from RF to baseband and resolved into two quadrature components which are fed to the respective inputs of the error amplifier (4). Periodically the pre-processor (3) is switched into a calibration mode in which test signals are applied to the amplifier instead of the input signal. At these times the signal strength of the output of the power amplifier is measured and used to provide pre-distortion factors in the signal preprocessor (3) to improve amplifier linearity. <IMAGE>