Spectral Regrowth Reduction for Digital Audio Broadcasting Using EER Amplifiers

For the amplitude modulation (AM) radio broadcast band, there are several standards being considered for digital audio broadcast (DAB), all using orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM). One of the main challenges to implementing digital audio broadcasting is that existing broadcast equipment was not designed for it. Unlike analog AM, which is a low bandwidth amplitude modulated signal, OFDM is a noise-like signal with significant amplitude and phase modulation. Most AM transmitters use an envelope elimination and restoration (EER) amplifier architecture, where the amplitude and phase components of the signal are amplified separately then recombined at the high power stage. The magnitude and phase component bandwidths are several times that of the input signal, and any filtering in the amplifier will result in spectral regrowth due to poor cancellation of this high frequency content. This paper develops the concept of using time-domain preprocessing on the signal to reduce the bandwidth expansion in EER amplifiers. The processing exploits the localization of the bandwidth expansion and its correlation with spectral regrowth at the output. The proposed algorithm identifies distortion- causing signal sections and replaces each one with an alternative signal trajectory. Using the processing, out of band emissions are reduced at the expense of increased computational complexity and error vector magnitude. Promising results are shown for the DRM 10 kHz digital signal, with reductions in spectral regrowth of up to 10 dB.