A system for substantially eliminating nonlinear distortion, such as intermodulation products, introduced when a signal is processed by a nonlinear device. The system adds an out-of-band signal to an input signal to produce a combined signal having a power that substantially equals a nominal operating point power for a nonlinear device. Preferably, the instantaneous power of the out-of-band signal is adjusted by an automatic gain amplifier. The combined signal is input to the nonlinear device to produce an output. A filter processes the output of the nonlinear device to recover the information content of the original signal after processing by the nonlinear device. For example, if the nonlinear device is a power amplifier, the filtered output is an amplification of the input signal.
A system for a closed power control feedback loop allows for the use of a non-linear amplifier for amplifying a phase modulated (PM) signal while introducing an inverse version of the desired amplitude modulated (AM) signal into the feedback loop using a variable gain element. By introducing an inverse version of the desired AM portion of the signal into the power control feedback loop, the non-linear, and highly efficient, power amplifier may be used to amplify only the PM portion of the signal, while the AM portion is introduced by the power control feedback loop. In another aspect of the invention, an inverse version of the AM portion of the desired transmit signal is introduced into the power control feedback loop of an amplifier that is amplifying both a phase modulated signal and an amplitude modulated signal. By introducing an inverse version of the desired AM signal into the power control feedback loop, the power control feedback loop may not cancel the AM component present at the output of the power amplifier. In yet another aspect of the invention, the desired AM signal is injected into the feedback loop along with the power control reference signal.
