Classifications

• • H—ELECTRICITY
  • H03—ELECTRONIC CIRCUITRY
  • H03F—AMPLIFIERS
  • H03F1/00—Details of amplifiers with only discharge tubes, only semiconductor devices or only unspecified devices as amplifying elements
  • H03F1/02—Modifications of amplifiers to raise the efficiency, e.g. gliding Class A stages, use of an auxiliary oscillation
  • H03F1/0205—Modifications of amplifiers to raise the efficiency, e.g. gliding Class A stages, use of an auxiliary oscillation in transistor amplifiers
  • H03F1/0288—Modifications of amplifiers to raise the efficiency, e.g. gliding Class A stages, use of an auxiliary oscillation in transistor amplifiers using a main and one or several auxiliary peaking amplifiers whereby the load is connected to the main amplifier using an impedance inverter, e.g. Doherty amplifiers

Definitions

• the invention relates to a Doherty amplifier system with a Doherty amplifier with a downstream antenna structure.
• Adaptive antenna systems or phased array techniques are known. See, e.g. Sarkar et al. "Smart Antennas", John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, New Jersey, 2003.
• a one- or multi-dimensional antenna array with so-called antenna arrays is used to increase the transmission-side antenna gain, consisting of individual antenna elements in which a signal to be transmitted by means of suitable complex valued Weighting (weighting in amplitude and phase) is switched to the individual antenna elements and so the desired transmission lobe is achieved with the resulting gain.
• Weighting weighting in amplitude and phase
• a Doherty architecture is particularly distinguished, as it is known for example from US 2006/0214732 Al.
• Fig. 1 shows a Doherty amplifier 1 according to the prior art.
• the individual sub-amplifiers 2, 3 and 4 are arranged in parallel.
• the input of each sub-amplifier 2, 3, 4 is connected to a drive unit 5, which supplies an input signal Si with different phase angles and amplitudes to the individual inputs of the sub-amplifiers 2-4.
• the outputs of the sub-amplifiers 2-4 are connected to a common antenna 6. Only the output of a single sub-amplifier 4 is in direct communication with the antenna 6.
• the other outputs of the other sub-amplifiers 2 and 3 are arranged in cascade
• Phase shifter which in the embodiment as% -
• Lines 7 and 8 are formed, connected to the antenna 6.
• the output signals of the sub-amplifiers 2-4 are first combined with each other in signal combiners (combiners) 9a and 9b before being supplied to the antenna 6.
• a disadvantage of these methods is that the combiners are either relatively narrow-band or lossy. When connecting these amplifier architectures to the o.a. adaptive antenna systems are therefore disadvantageous to the described coupling methods.
• the object of the present invention is this
• no signal combiners are present at the outputs of the subamplifiers, which output signals combine the sub-amplifier prior to feeding to the antenna to form a total signal, but the individual output signals of the sub-amplifiers are fed directly to an antenna element sub-array of the entire antenna arrangement without the interposition of a signal combiner.
• each subamplifier is preferably assigned an antenna element. The combination of the output signals of the sub-amplifiers to the total signal to be transmitted then results from the superimposition of the electromagnetic waves radiated by the respective antenna elements. In this way, the signal combiner is saved at the output of the sub-amplifier and there is an even better decoupling of the outputs of the sub-amplifier.
• An antenna array which is in principle arbitrarily structured is divided according to the invention into sub-arrays (antenna elements) in accordance with the number of amplifiers to be operated in parallel.
• the number of individual antennas per subarray does not have to be equal to a priori. For reasons of simplicity and to achieve a similar lobe characteristic, however, it makes sense that their number and the lobe characteristic are identical or at least similar.
• Fig. 3 shows an embodiment of an antenna array with ULVAs
• FIG. 4 shows an embodiment of an antenna array with a parabolic mirror.
• a ULVA Uniform Linear Virtual Array
• An extension to any, even multi-dimensional Antennenanorditch is possible and easy to carry out.
• a ULVA for example, by means of suitable transformations, as z.
• a ULVA for example, by means of suitable transformations, as z.
• a lobe shaping for a two-dimensional antenna array is described, for example, in Ghavami, "Wideband Smart Antenna Theory Using rectangular Array Structures ", IEEE Trans. On Signal Processing, Vol. 50, No.
• a three-stage Doherty amplifier is used in Figure 2 as a starting basis. Already described with reference to FIG. 1 elements are provided with the same reference numerals, whereby the assignment is facilitated.
• the Doherty amplifier consists of several sub-amplifiers 2, 3 and 4, the input of which is in each case connected to the drive unit 5.
• the drive unit 5 also controls the inputs of the sub-amplifiers 2-4 here with different phase angles and / or signal amplitudes.
• the Doherty amplifier is to provide only a low output power, initially only the first sub-amplifier 2 is active. Upon reaching the saturation of the first sub-amplifier 2 whose
• the individual output signals of the sub-amplifiers 2-4 are thus not subjected to different phase shifts as in the prior art and then combined with each other in signal combiners, but each output of each sub-amplifier 2-4 is directly supplied directly to its associated antenna element 10-12.
• the signal combiners can thus be omitted and there is a much better decoupling of the outputs of the sub-amplifiers 2-4.
• FIG. 3 shows an example of how the individual antenna elements 10, 11, 12 or sub-arrays can be arranged within the overall antenna 6.
• Each antenna element or sub-array 10, 11 and 12 consists in the embodiment shown in FIG. 3 of several individual antennas, which are arranged alternately to each other.
• the first antenna element or subarray 1 connected to the first subamplifier 2 consists of the individual antennas 20i, 2O 2 , 2O 3 and 2O 4 .
• the second antenna element 11 or subarray 2 connected to the second subamplifier 3 consists of the individual antennas 21 ⁇ , 2I 2 , 2I 3 and 2I 4 and the third antenna element 12 or subarray 3 connected to the third subamplifier 4 consists of the single-antenna antennas 22i, 22 2 , 22 3 and 22 4 .
• the individual antennas are arranged mirror-symmetrically on both sides, starting from a center plane 23, with respect to the center plane 23. But there are also a variety of other one-dimensional or multi-dimensional arrangements conceivable.
• X denotes the antenna elements of the first sub-array, O that of the second and V that of the third sub-array. This subdivision corresponds to a spatial subsampling. Accordingly, to avoid ambiguities, distances between the antenna elements are required whose values are smaller than "/, where d is the distance between two antenna elements, ⁇ is the wavelength of the signal, and N is the number of subarrays of each 2-L elements for each subarray, so that, as mentioned above, the lobe characteristic of each of these subarrays can be made nearly equal.
• Embodiment of FIG. 3 gives the relationship for the field strength in the far field of the antennas too
• E ⁇ ⁇ P) W n here denotes the complex-valued weighting for the antenna element 1 of the sub-array n.
• ⁇ is the desired direction of the lobe of the resulting overall array.
• S n ⁇ t) is the signal to be radiated over sub-array n. In the preferred direction ⁇ , the signal to be transmitted then results in a simple manner as the sum of the sub-signals S x (/) + S 2 (t) + S 3 (/) without consideration of the antenna gain.
• the Doherty amplifier is only slightly controlled, only the carrier amplifier PA1 is active, and accordingly the signal is transmitted only via the subarray 1. If the carrier amplifier is operated in saturation and the first peak amplifier PA2 additionally active, then the signals are transmitted in accordance with the Doherty principle via the sub-arrays 1 and 2. The combination takes place in the air by the addition or superposition of the two partial waves. In peak operation, the second peak amplifier PA3 is also active and the field strengths of the three arrays are superimposed.
• the carrier amplifier PAl When operating at medium power, the carrier amplifier PAl provides a constant amplitude. Amplitude modulation of the transmission signal takes place via the variation of the transmission amplitude of the peak amplifier PA2 and the resulting superposition of the field strengths according to the lobe shaping. The same applies to operation at high power, in which PA3 is active.
• this arrangement can also be used in directional antennas, in which the directivity is achieved by mechanical means.
• n feeders are used and thus the Merging by adding the signals of each feeder.
• the directivity can also be achieved by varying the signal propagation times in the dielectrics.
• Such antennas are i.a. known as Luneberg antennas.
• each amplifier a different signal via the connected sub-array emits and formed by the combination of the electromagnetic waves of the sub-arrays the actual transmission signal. It is also possible for each amplifier to send out the same signal via the connected sub-array.
• the antenna array can perform a club shaping by appropriate wiring of the individual antennas of the sub-arrays, resulting in the result of the desired lobe characteristic of the overall signal.
• the antenna array may have any multi-dimensional structure and the lobe shaping may be done by appropriate complex-valued weighting (amplitude weighting and phase rotation).
• that can Antenna array can be modeled as so-called ULVA (Uniform Linear Virtual Array), which can be one or more dimensional, and the real array structure can be obtained by suitable transformation of / to the ULVA.
• ULVA Uniform Linear Virtual Array
• a method for operating amplifier architectures with a plurality of individual amplifiers on an antenna array in which instead of an antenna array with individual antennas, which perform its lobe shaping by appropriate weighting of the feed signals, an antenna arrangement is used, the lobe shaping is achieved by the mechanical structure of the antenna and This antenna is then connected by appropriate power supply through the various amplifiers
• the antenna arrangement of various individual antennas can be carried out with club shaping by mechanical measures, which point in the desired direction of the resulting lobe, wherein the respective
• the antenna can also be a parabolic antenna and the feed can be realized by different feeders, the number of which corresponds to the sub-amplifier. This is illustrated in FIG. 4. There, a parabolic mirror 30 is shown. The antenna elements 10 - 12 are arranged as feeder at different positions of the parabolic mirror 30.
• the lobe formation can also be effected by transit times within dielectrics instead of the mechanical structure.
• an antenna element can be designed as a Luneberg antenna.
• the invention is not limited to the illustrated embodiment and also applicable to differently configured sub-arrays.

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• Engineering & Computer Science (AREA)
• Power Engineering (AREA)
• Variable-Direction Aerials And Aerial Arrays (AREA)
• Amplifiers (AREA)

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• 2006
  • 2006-12-05 DE DE102006057324A patent/DE102006057324A1/de not_active Withdrawn
• 2007
  • 2007-11-12 WO PCT/EP2007/009781 patent/WO2008067891A2/de active Application Filing
  • 2007-11-12 AU AU2007327942A patent/AU2007327942A1/en not_active Abandoned
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• 2008
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