阅读说明：本技术 一种用于实施包络跟踪的方法和装置 (Method and apparatus for performing envelope tracking ) 是由 夏勤 于 2021-09-01 设计创作，主要内容包括：本公开揭示了一种用于实施包络跟踪的方法及其装置,其中,方法包括以下步骤：S100、在第一预设时间段内,获取包络信号；S200、对获取的包络信号,离散化处理,并进一步求取平均和得到第一信号,并且：在此过程中,维持包络的峰值功率不变。本公开实现了一种新的实施包络跟踪的解决方案,利用离散化后平均和的手段和维持峰值功率不变的手段,能够在几乎维持原始包络特性的前提下有效降低包络带宽。(The present disclosure discloses a method and apparatus for implementing envelope tracking, wherein the method comprises the following steps: s100, acquiring an envelope signal in a first preset time period; s200, discretizing the acquired envelope signal, further obtaining an average sum to obtain a first signal, and: in this process, the peak power of the envelope is maintained constant. The method realizes a new solution for implementing envelope tracking, and can effectively reduce the envelope bandwidth on the premise of almost maintaining the original envelope characteristic by using a means of averaging after discretization and a means of maintaining the peak power unchanged.)

1. A method for implementing envelope tracking, comprising the steps of:

s100, acquiring an envelope signal in a first preset time period;

s200, discretizing the acquired envelope signal, further obtaining an average sum to obtain a first signal, and: in this process, the peak power of the envelope is maintained constant.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein step S100 further comprises, preferably:

s101, when the envelope signal is obtained, according to a set first maximum value, filtering out waveform signals lower than the first maximum value.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein:

the first maximum value is dynamically adjusted.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein:

the average sum includes any of: arithmetic mean sum, weighted mean sum, geometric mean sum.

5. The method according to claim 1, wherein the step S200 of maintaining the peak power of the envelope constant specifically comprises:

for the discretized signal, a waveform signal in which the peak value is the largest is taken as a second signal, and the peak power of the envelope is maintained by comparing the first signal with the second signal.

6. An apparatus for implementing envelope tracking, comprising:

a storage unit and a processing unit;

the storage unit comprises instructions that, when executed by the processing unit, cause the apparatus to:

acquiring an envelope signal within a first preset time period;

discretizing the acquired envelope signal, further averaging to obtain a first signal, and: in this process, the peak power of the envelope is maintained constant.

7. The apparatus of claim 6, wherein:

when the envelope signal is acquired, the waveform signal lower than the first maximum value is filtered out according to the set first maximum value.

8. The apparatus of claim 7, wherein:

the first maximum value is dynamically adjusted.

9. The apparatus of claim 6, wherein:

the average sum includes any of: arithmetic mean sum, weighted mean sum, geometric mean sum.

10. The apparatus of claim 6, wherein maintaining the peak power of the envelope constant comprises:

for the discretized signal, a waveform signal in which the peak value is the largest is taken as a second signal, and the peak power of the envelope is maintained by comparing the first signal with the second signal.

Technical Field

The present disclosure relates to the field of communications, and more particularly, to a method and apparatus for performing envelope tracking.

Background

In the field of communications, power supplies with envelope tracking capabilities may be used in order to improve the efficiency of radio frequency power amplifiers.

Envelope tracking may dynamically change the supply voltage of the radio frequency power amplifier with the transmitted output power of the radio frequency power amplifier. Envelope tracking may also dynamically adjust the supply voltage of the power amplifier to track the amplitude of the envelope of the rf input signal.

When the signal envelope becomes large, the supply voltage is boosted; when the signal envelope becomes small, the supply voltage is lowered. In this way, the RF power amplifier can operate in a large part of the operating range, close to the optimum efficiency point, thereby improving the utilization rate of energy.

With the further development of the wideband 5G/Satellite envelope tracking power amplifier system, the bandwidth of the envelope is enlarged with the increase of the bandwidth of the RF signal, and in addition, with the development of the Multi-carrier technology, the bandwidth of the envelope is larger, which makes it more and more difficult to implement high-speed tracking with hardware, the existing envelope tracking system can achieve an RF bandwidth of 200MHz, the higher the bandwidth, the greater the tracking difficulty, except that the power consumption of the envelope tracking becomes higher with the increase of the system bandwidth, the tracking of the high-speed envelope is also an unattainable target.

How to further improve the envelope tracking capability is always a technical problem to be considered in the field.

Disclosure of Invention

To solve the above technical problem, the present disclosure provides a method for implementing envelope tracking, comprising the following steps:

s100, acquiring an envelope signal in a first preset time period;

s200, discretizing the acquired envelope signal, further obtaining an average sum to obtain a first signal, and: in this process, the peak power of the envelope is maintained constant.

Preferably, step S100 further includes:

s101, when the envelope signal is obtained, according to a set first maximum value, filtering out waveform signals lower than the first maximum value.

Preferably, the first and second liquid crystal materials are,

the first maximum value is dynamically adjusted.

Preferably, the first and second liquid crystal materials are,

the average sum includes any of: arithmetic mean sum, weighted mean sum, geometric mean sum.

Preferably, the first and second liquid crystal materials are,

in step S200, maintaining the peak power of the envelope unchanged specifically includes:

for the discretized signal, a waveform signal in which the peak value is the largest is taken as a second signal, and the peak power of the envelope is maintained by comparing the first signal with the second signal.

In addition, the present disclosure also discloses an apparatus for implementing envelope tracking, comprising:

a storage unit and a processing unit;

the storage unit comprises instructions that, when executed by the processing unit, cause the apparatus to:

acquiring an envelope signal within a first preset time period;

discretizing the acquired envelope signal, further averaging to obtain a first signal, and: in this process, the peak power of the envelope is maintained constant.

By the technical scheme, the method and the device for implementing envelope tracking are realized, and envelope bandwidth can be effectively reduced on the premise of almost maintaining original envelope characteristics by using a means of averaging after discretization and a means of maintaining constant peak power.

Drawings

FIG. 1 is a schematic envelope diagram of an embodiment of the present disclosure after performing the operation of the present invention;

FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram of an envelope after a second order PET operation is performed in the prior art;

FIG. 3 is a partial schematic diagram of an apparatus shown in one embodiment of the present disclosure, which embodies the characteristics of the present disclosure to maintain envelope power unchanged;

FIG. 4 is a schematic diagram of an envelope shown in one embodiment of the present disclosure;

FIG. 5 is a diagram of normalized averaged summed envelopes versus normalized raw envelopes for an embodiment of the present disclosure in terms of envelope processing;

fig. 6 is a schematic diagram of an envelope after a prior art de-valley operation is performed.

Detailed Description

In the following description, numerous details are set forth to provide a more thorough explanation of embodiments of the present disclosure. It will be apparent, however, to one skilled in the art that embodiments of the invention may be practiced without these specific details. In other instances, well-known structures and devices are shown in block diagram form, rather than in detail, in order to avoid obscuring embodiments of the present disclosure. Furthermore, features of different embodiments described below may be combined with each other, unless specifically stated otherwise.

In one embodiment, the present disclosure presents a method for implementing envelope tracking, comprising the steps of:

s100, acquiring an envelope signal in a first preset time period;

s200, discretizing the acquired envelope signal, further obtaining an average sum to obtain a first signal, and: in this process, the peak power of the envelope is maintained constant.

The technical effect of the embodiment is compared and illustrated by fig. 1 and 2.

Fig. 1 is an envelope diagram illustrating waveforms after averaging and obtaining 64 discretized waveforms in an embodiment of the present disclosure, where a waveform 1-1 represents an original multi-carrier envelope signal, and a waveform 1-2 represents a waveform diagram after simulation processing according to the scheme of the present embodiment, and it can be found that:

compared with the waveform 1-1, the waveform 1-2 adopts a means of keeping the peak power unchanged, so that the part of the waveform indicated by the highest peak in the waveform 1-2 is almost completely reserved, and has almost no difference with the original waveform 1-1 in the part; for waveform 1-2, the averaging and summing approach results in a bandwidth roughly between-500 and 500, significantly reducing the bandwidth compared to-2500 to 2500 for the original waveform 1-1.

Fig. 2 is an envelope diagram of a PA chip type semiconductor device using a second-order PET method in the prior art, wherein waveforms 2-1 to 2-5 represent envelope signals after the second-order PET processing, and from the amplitude in fig. 2, a waveform 2-3 illustrates a portion of the waveform with the highest peak value, and the portion of the waveform is almost completely retained and has little difference from the original waveform 1 in this portion; however, it can be found that:

waveforms 2-1 through 2-5 do not significantly reduce bandwidth.

It is therefore the present disclosure that realizes a new solution for implementing envelope tracking, which utilizes the means of averaging sum after discretization and the means of maintaining the peak power unchanged, and can effectively reduce the envelope bandwidth on the premise of almost maintaining the original envelope characteristics. It can be understood that the waveform finally obtained in step S200 may be further provided to the rf power amplifier, so as to improve the performance of the rf power amplifier.

In another embodiment, step S100 further comprises:

s101, when the envelope signal is obtained, according to a set first maximum value, filtering out waveform signals lower than the first maximum value.

For this embodiment, it is possible to filter out a portion of the signal before step S200 is performed.

It will be appreciated that the first maximum value may be the nth highest value of the peak below the highest value of the peak over a period of time, for example, n may be 3 or 4, see peak 3 or 4 th highest value in the original envelope waveform in fig. 1, etc.

It should be noted that the first maximum value may be an average sum over a period of time, and then the second peak value of the processed waveform is compared with the nth high value of the original envelope waveform. Preferably, the first maximum value is a value determined after artificial intelligence processing of the application scenario or communication throughput or power further based on AI. And thus, in another embodiment,

the first maximum value is dynamically adjusted.

In another embodiment of the present invention, the substrate is,

the average sum includes any of: arithmetic mean sum, weighted mean sum, geometric mean sum.

For example, assuming that the number of signals is odd, taking the arithmetic mean sum as an example, the discrete expression of the averaged and summed waveform New envelope (i) is as follows: new _ envelope (i) ((1/(2 m +1)), (E (i-m) +. + E (i-1) + E (i)) + E (i +1) +. E (i + m));

wherein e (i) represents the i-th discrete signal to be processed, and the signal is the central signal in the odd continuous signals, and 2m +1 represents the odd 2m +1 signals in total;

it can be found that the above expression is an arithmetic average sum for an odd number of signals, an even number being similar, for example 2m even numbers from E (i-m) to E (i) and from E (i +1) to E (i + m-1), the coefficients of the expression then being: 1/2 m.

Further, arithmetic mean and means that the weight of each signal is the same, and weighted mean and means that the weight of each signal may not be the same. With respect to the technical solutions and concepts disclosed in the present disclosure, it can be understood that the weighted average sum is theoretically better than the arithmetic average sum because the waveforms of different peaks in the envelope signal are not equal in position in the entire envelope signal. Overall, the waveform of each part of the peak with higher peak value is more prominent in the whole envelope signal than the waveform of the rest part with lower peak value, therefore, it is better for the present disclosure to specifically adopt the means of weighted average sum when averaging the sum.

Preferably, different thresholds or a single threshold may be set, and the importance or the ratio of different waveforms is further quantified according to the thresholds, so as to further determine: and in the process of obtaining the weighted average sum, weights corresponding to different peak waveforms are obtained.

It can be appreciated that from an engineering point of view, the arithmetic mean sum is easier to implement than the weighted mean sum. As for the geometric mean sum, it is also a specific means for obtaining the mean sum, and is not described herein again.

In another embodiment of the present invention, the substrate is,

in step S200, maintaining the peak power of the envelope unchanged specifically includes:

for the discretized signal, a waveform signal in which the peak value is the largest is taken as a second signal, and the peak power of the envelope is maintained by comparing the first signal with the second signal.

For this embodiment, a specific means of maintaining the peak power of the envelope constant is given. It will be appreciated that it is not necessary to rely on comparing first and second signals, for example: the waveform signal with the maximum peak value can be directly locked in a period of time, and the peak power of the envelope is kept unchanged. If necessary, reference can also be made to 2 in the prior art^ndThe order PET method ensures that the peak power is constant.

In another embodiment of the present invention, the substrate is,

referring to fig. 3, maintaining the peak power of the envelope constant by comparing the first signal with the second signal, further comprises:

the waveform signal having the largest peak value is set,

the peak power of the envelope is maintained constant by means of a first comparison unit and a second comparison unit, wherein,

referring to the upper comparison unit in fig. 3, which represents the first comparison unit, the positive input signal of the first comparison unit is the first signal, and the negative input signal is the second signal; when the first signal is larger than the second signal, outputting the first signal;

referring to the lower comparison unit in fig. 3, which represents the second comparison unit, the positive input signal of the second comparison unit is the second signal, and the negative input signal is the first signal; when the second signal is greater than the first signal, the second signal is output.

For fig. 3, X represents the envelope signal before processing and Y represents the envelope signal after averaging and can follow the following expression expressed by X, Y representing discrete variables:

y[n]＝b[0]*x[n]+b[1]*x[n-1]+b[2]*x[n-2]+...+b[numTaps-1]*x[n-numTaps+1]

in the Z transform of fig. 3, for a discrete signal, the-1 st power of Z indicates a forward shift by one number, and the-1 st power of Z n times, i.e., the-n power of Z, indicates a forward shift by n numbers. For time-domain filtering, the X signal is the signal before filtering and the Y signal is the signal after filtering.

Further, referring to fig. 4, in another embodiment, averaging and summing are taken for an odd number of signals as an example:

if b [0], b [1], … … b [ numTaps-1] are taken sequentially: if the aforementioned odd number of 1/(2m +1) signals is 1, numTaps equals 2m + 1. The semiconductor device of the present disclosure may further be configured such that the comparison unit performs an operation represented by the following pseudo code to ensure that the peak power is constant:

it can be appreciated that, at this time, the comparison unit is configured to compare: the arithmetically averaged sum signal New _ envelope (i) is summed with the centering signal e (i) of an odd number of consecutive signals, wherein,

when the New _ envelope (i) is less than or equal to E (i), directly assigning E (i) to the New _ envelope (i); otherwise, New _ envelope (i) is the arithmetic mean sum of the odd number of signals.

For even-numbered signals, the signals can be processed in the above manner when the signals are added to meet the odd-numbered signals, or the signals can be processed in the above manner when the signals are removed to meet the even-numbered signals.

Thus, in addition to comparing the first and second signals to maintain the peak power constant as described above, the present disclosure may also maintain the peak power constant by summing the arithmetic average of all the discrete signals and by the comparison unit of this embodiment.

In another embodiment, referring to fig. 4, 4-1 represents the original multi-carrier envelope signal amplitude, and 4-2 represents the envelope signal after arithmetic averaging and summing of the semiconductor device of this embodiment, it can be seen that the averaging and summing, 4-2, nearly maintains the original envelope characteristics, including the EVM requirements, as compared to 4-1.

In fact, in addition to fig. 1 and 4, which prove the technical effect of the present disclosure, further referring to fig. 5, it can be known that: in the case of the disclosed arrangement, the peak envelope is unchanged from the normalized raw envelope signal amplitude, normalized arithmetic mean sum envelope signal amplitude represented by the abscissa and ordinate of fig. 5.

In addition, the concepts and schemes disclosed in the present disclosure, in addition to the features of constant Peak power and reducing the bandwidth of the envelope, can also be understood from fig. 1, 4 and 5, and the present disclosure can also reduce the Peak-to-average ratio PAR of the envelope signal, and reduce the proportion of Peak-to-trough (Peak-to-trough) so as to reduce the envelope bandwidth.

As shown in fig. 6, if a semiconductor device such as a PA chip in the prior art performs a degrough removal (Detrough) operation, in the figure, 6-1 represents an original envelope signal, 6-2 represents a degrouped envelope signal, and 6-3 represents a characteristic waveform of the degrouped envelope signal, in other words, if 6-2 is an envelope signal, 6-3 is an envelope signal of the envelope signal. As shown in fig. 6, the prior art de-valley processing has resulted in a change in the characteristics of the envelope signal.

It is apparent that the disclosed solution, both compared to the second order PET method in the prior art and compared to the degluating (Detrough) method, achieves: the peak power is effectively maintained unchanged, the bandwidth of the envelope is reduced, and the original envelope characteristic is maintained.

Further, in another embodiment,

and comparing the waveforms of different peak values of each part in the first preset time period to determine a waveform signal with the maximum peak value. For example, the signal of the first discrete signal is first taken as the maximum peak, and then compared with the waveforms of other subsequent different peaks, and finally the following signals in the first preset time period are determined: the waveform signal with the largest peak value.

As previously mentioned, the specific means for maintaining the peak power constant is very numerous, and although the present disclosure has enumerated various embodiments involving comparison or comparison units, the present disclosure is not limited to these specific embodiments. It should be noted that, since averaging and time are required, regardless of the embodiment of the comparing unit, the signal holding is naturally involved, and the signal holding is reflected in hardware to be reflected in matching of time constants, and the matching problem is common knowledge in the field of hardware circuits. The disclosure does not address how to design and match the time constants, and is not described in detail herein. Moreover, in fact, there are no ideal devices without delay effects. In general, whether analog or digital, when a time constant matching or delay unit is concerned, it may comprise any type of delay circuit or buffer circuit.

Additionally, in another embodiment, the present disclosure also discloses an apparatus for implementing envelope tracking, comprising:

a storage unit and a processing unit;

the storage unit comprises instructions that, when executed by the processing unit, cause the apparatus to:

acquiring an envelope signal within a first preset time period;

discretizing the acquired envelope signal, further averaging to obtain a first signal, and: in this process, the peak power of the envelope is maintained constant.

It will be appreciated that the above-described apparatus may be regarded as an apparatus for performing the method as described hereinbefore. The processing unit in the apparatus is preferably a baseband signal processing unit. Therefore, the processed signal is output to the envelope power amplifier, and a high-efficiency envelope power amplifier scheme can be provided.

In another embodiment of the present invention, the substrate is,

when the envelope signal is acquired, the waveform signal lower than the first maximum value is filtered out according to the set first maximum value.

It should be noted that, besides the capability of the processing unit to implement soft filtering, the apparatus may also include a hardware filter.

In another embodiment of the present invention, the substrate is,

the first maximum value is dynamically adjusted.

In another embodiment of the present invention, the substrate is,

the average sum includes any of: arithmetic mean sum, weighted mean sum, geometric mean sum.

It should be noted that the solving of the arithmetic average sum and the weighted average sum may be performed by weight filters, but the weights of the parts are the same for the arithmetic average sum.

In another embodiment, maintaining the peak power of the envelope constant specifically includes:

for the discretized signal, a waveform signal in which the peak value is the largest is taken as a second signal, and the peak power of the envelope is maintained by comparing the first signal with the second signal.

In another embodiment of the present invention, the substrate is,

the device also comprises a first comparison unit and a second comparison unit, and the peak power of the envelope is kept unchanged by comparing the first signal with the second signal.

Still further, the instructions further comprise:

the waveform signal having the largest peak value is set,

the peak power of the envelope is maintained constant by means of a first comparison unit and a second comparison unit, wherein,

a positive input signal of the first comparing unit is a first signal, and a negative input signal is a second signal; when the first signal is larger than the second signal, outputting the first signal;

the positive input signal of the second comparison unit is a second signal, and the negative input signal is a first signal; when the second signal is greater than the first signal, the second signal is output.

Further, in another embodiment, averaging and summing are taken for an odd number of signals as an example:

if b [0], b [1], … … b [ numTaps-1] are all 1/(2m +1) as described above, the present disclosure may further configure the comparison unit to perform the following pseudo code method to ensure that the peak power is unchanged:

further, in another embodiment,

and comparing the waveforms of different peak values of each part in the first preset time period to determine a waveform signal with the maximum peak value. For example, the signal of the first discrete signal is first taken as the maximum peak, and then compared with the waveforms of other subsequent different peaks, and finally the following signals in the first preset time period are determined: the waveform signal with the largest peak value.

In another embodiment, the acquired envelope signal is an envelope signal input to the radio frequency power amplifier.

For the embodiment, the envelope signal is the envelope signal input to the radio frequency power amplifier. Just as most prior art solutions use the radio frequency (i.e. RF) input signal as the reference signal for envelope tracking, the embodiments also implement envelope tracking from the signal source, i.e. the envelope signal input to the radio frequency power amplifier.

In some embodiments, the processing unit may be provided on a chip or CPU (e.g., silicon) of the digital transmitter. Furthermore, the comparison unit may also be provided on a chip or processing unit of the digital transmitter.

Furthermore, the device can be implemented at the radio frequency end in addition to the baseband end. The radio frequency terminal may include: an envelope detector, a filter, by means of which the functionality of the above-mentioned processing unit is realized, such that the apparatus achieves the technical effect of the present disclosure.

Embodiments of the present disclosure may be implemented in hardware or in software, depending on the particular implementation requirements. The implementation can be performed using a digital storage medium (e.g., a floppy disk, DVD, blu-ray, CD, ROM, PROM, EPROM, EEPROM, or FLASH memory unit) having electronically readable control signals stored thereon. Accordingly, the digital storage medium may be computer-readable.

In some embodiments, a programmable logic device (e.g., a field programmable gate array) may be used to perform some or all of the functions of the methods described herein. In some embodiments, a field programmable gate array may cooperate with a microprocessor to implement the power supplies described herein.

The above-described embodiments are merely illustrative of the principles of the present disclosure. It is to be understood that modifications and variations of the arrangements and details described herein will be apparent to those skilled in the art. It is the intention, therefore, to be limited only as indicated by the scope of the claims appended hereto, and not by the specific details presented in the description and illustrations of the embodiments presented herein.