Impact of power amplifier configuration on LTE carrier aggregation performance

Abstract

Assuming two non-contiguous carriers, the impact of the power amplifier (PA) configuration is investigated. The mathematical derivations show that the minimum link performance (uplink data rate) occurs when the receive power allocation between carriers amounts to either 3 dB or −3 dB, depending on the bandwidth and path loss allocation. Moreover, it is shown that the link performance can be significantly improved by configuring the PA farther away from the worst-case operating points. The analysis matches well with the experimental results based on the PA measurement campaign.