Technology
ESSENTIALS
Ghastly Footprint
Worldwide, wireless communications waste over 18 billion dollars annually in wasted electricity converted to heat. Poor efficiency power amplifiers are the cause. QDAcomm technology reduces this waste by a factor of five.
Systems Design Concept
QDA is an energy-efficient transmitter architecture created via a systems approach. It merges digital, analog, mathematics, and materials science. QDA operates on spectrally efficient signals, with a strongly varying envelope, using switched mode amplifiers without distortion. Average energy efficiencies top 50% for signal power amplifications.
Standards
QDA is standard agnostic, meaning QDA can be applied to a wide range of systems from actual 4G and Wi-Fi, to the new 5G, Wi-Fi 6 and wired communications, from the network radio transmitters to the wireless user equipment independent of the signal type and bandwidth.
Effects
QDA reduces base station operational costs, enhances battery life in mobile devices, and reduces per unit cost prices when integrated into existing product designs. QDA introduces eco-sustainable performance in telecommunications.
INNOVATIONS
Architecture
QDA is a process, out of a system of complex parts, which essentially behaves like a linear amplifier. From a global system perspective it operates as a linear amplifier, composed of parallel stages behaving as non-linear amplifiers, compensated, within the system, to maintain efficiency. By digitally decomposing the original complex signal into a set of simple constant envelope signals, each one is individually amplified by switched amplifiers operating at their maximum energy efficiency point. As so prepared, using switched mode amplifiers, characterized by a higher efficiency and near zero consumption in idle state, completes the amplification.
Flexibility
The modular approach of QDA technology permits higher flexibility in addressing a wider range of applications, with different types of signals and bandwidth needs. Our technology uses a newly developed signal processing optimization. This uses digital pulse shaping of quantization noise which allows a reduction of the number of amplification branches, improves the efficiency, and reduces both the in-band and out-of-band quantization noise. Switched mode amplifiers, characterized by a higher efficiency and near zero consumption in idle state, handle different power outputs. The power signal for output of this parallelized structure is compiled by combining the set of amplified signals using highly efficient smart combiners counter-balanced for the QDA process.
DISRUPTIONS
PERFORMANCE: While QDA technology embodies innovative concepts and creative design, its central disruption is performance. QDA yields high efficiency performance across the entire dynamic range, not just at discreet points – providing greater than 50% average.
COST: Implementing QDA into and existing designs will lower the per unit manufacturing costs.
IMPLEMENTATION: QDA can be composed of a high-performance FPGA, including RF bandwidth analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) and digital-to-analog converters (DACs), or by a chip that integrates both signal processing parts of FPGA, DACs, ADCs, and mixers for up-conversion. The power amplifier hardware that can be implemented in diverse technologies (CMOS – Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor, GaN – Gallium Nitrite, GaS – Gallium Arsenide and Bipolar).
APPLICATIONS
Mobile Phones
In mobile phones Power Amplifiers consume 25% to 50% of the available power. Using QDA could recover at least 50% of that number. QDA use would reduce power consumption, improve battery life, make addition phone features possible, and lower the unit production costs of the phone. Incorporation of QDA technology into mobile phone designs is straightforward.
Base Stations
In base stations Power Amplifiers consume 59% of the available power. This is enormously costly as 90% of that is converted to heat as waste. Worldwide that annual waste is over 14 billion dollars a year. Using QDA could recover at least 50% of that number. QDA power amplifier hardware can be implemented in diverse technologies (CMOS – Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor, GaN – Gallium Nitrite, GaS – Gallium Arsenide and Bipolar).
Satellite Applications
As a technology which is standard agnostic, QDA can be employed in existing telecommunication systems as well as Satellite Communications, both at ground and space segments. QDA’s combines broadband support with both low complexity and high energy efficiency of signal power amplification making it quite suitable for high throughput data links, such as UAVs-satellite uplinks.
Communications Security
QDA can provide physical layer security for single-carrier, multi-carrier, and systems using NOMA communications. Because of the manner and low physical layer of communications of QDA technology, it has unique communications security applications.
PATENTS
The important features of the QDA technology are already protected by issued patents. QDAcomm’s patent portfolio includes 28 issued patents and applications in the USA, European Union, China, South Korea, Japan, and India. Additional patent applications in preparation for submission.
PRACTICAL SYNOPSIS
QDA (Quantized Digital Amplification) is not a new attachment, device, machine, or software app. Implemented in hardware and firmware QDA is a process, significantly more efficient for amplifying broadcast radio frequency (RF) signals, using substantially less electrical power.
Power amplification efficiency is often held prisoner by the complex behaviors of the signal to be amplified. Wide band signals with wide dynamic ranges, dense signal constellations, common in systems like 4G and 5G, pose dramatic obstacles to signal amplification efficiency, even when using the industry’s prevailing practices of good signal amplification, imposing the use of linear amplifiers with high backoff leading to energy efficiency degradation. QDA provides efficiency increases, 5 times typical efficiencies, while bypassing limitations of the prevailing techniques.
QDA uses a sophisticated Digital Signal Processor to operate on the signal to be amplified, dividing it up into many samples and then runs signal transformations on those samples. The transformed signal parts are then amplified in staggered stages to balance power usage. The different signal parts are then assembled, and after different transformations, it is possible to use linear amplification and then combine the signals and issue a unified amplified signal – all delivered while achieving a much greater level of power efficiency.
QDA Focus
Confronted with resolving a system of dismal efficiency, the easy path is to solve one aspect of the problem and gain some measure of improvement. Over the long period that the telecommunications industry has both suffered and wrestled with this PA problem, several such solitary approaches have been tried: (i) envelope tracking, (ii) LINC Linear Amplification with Non Linear Control, (iii) Doherty PA, (iv) Predistortion, (v) and, EER Envelope Elimination & Restore. Although each has provided some improvement, each has also been found wanting – either in performance, or limitations, cost or all three. The solution is to re-imagine the complete process from a systems perspective using a multidisciplinary approach. QDA operates by building a process, out of a system of complex parts, which essentially behaves like a linear amplifier. While from a global system perspective it operates as a linear amplifier, it also has stages that behave as non-linear amplifiers which are then compensated, within the system, to maintain efficiency.
