Multicarrier LUT-based data predistortion for non-linear satellite channels

Current satellite communication architectures can be potentially improved by applying multicarrier power amplification. Joint on-board amplification of multiple carriers reduces hardware and weight, enabling cost-efficient satellite architectures. However, on board power amplification is inherently a non-linear operation, whose distortion effects drastically increase when the high power amplifier (HPA) is operated in multiple carrier mode due to the generated inter-modulation products. In order to achieve the desired on-board power efficiency and to reduce the non-linear distortion, specific countermeasures need to be put in place. In this work we provide a novel data predistortion technique for multiple carriers satellite channel based on look up table (LUT) for high throughput applications. In contrast to known single carrier LUT techniques, the entries of the table are obtained by pursuing an analytical approach exploiting channel model and implementing recursive least squares techniques (RLS). A novel method to reduce the number of LUT entries based on LUT partitioning is proposed. Considerable performance gains over standard polynomial based predistortion are realized by the proposed technique.