Nujira, the Cambridge UK-based world leader in Envelope Tracking technology, has launched ET Surface Explorer – an advanced measurement and data visualisation tool for characterizing RF power amplifiers in ET mode.

According to the company, it accelerates PA characterisation, provides PA and product designers greater insight into the performance of ET PAs, and enables them to maximise the linearity, efficiency and output power benefits of operating PAs in ET mode.

Nujira will be demonstrating ET Surface Explorer at the International Microwave Symposium (IMS) 2012 in Montreal from June 17-22.

Tim Haynes, CEO of Nujira said: “The release of ET Surface Explorer shows our continued commitment to supporting RF designers by making the adoption of Envelope Tracking technology as painless as possible.

“Our NCT-T9102 PA characterization system was already far ahead of the competition in terms of accurately measuring and analyzing the performance of ET PAs, and ET Surface Explorer gives designers another powerful tool to simply and intuitively optimize PA performance.

“Smartphone designers and modem chipset developers can also benefit from ET Surface Explorer’s high productivity workflow, allowing them to compare and assess ET PA device performance in a few hours, rather than days.”

Accurately measuring the efficiency of an Envelope Tracking PA under dynamic supply modulation is one of the most challenging tasks faced by developers of RF Power Amplifiers.

It requires generation of precisely time-aligned envelope and RF signals; a high bandwidth, high current, low impedance power supply modulator; high bandwidth sensing of instantaneous current and voltage supplied to the PA; and measurement of the instantaneous RF power at input and output of the PA.

All of this data must be captured at more than 100 million samples/second, and then correlated to calculate the instantaneous efficiency of the RF PA.

ET Surface Explorer, used in conjunction with Nujira’s Flexible Development System waveform generator, captures data across the entire ET RF power/supply voltage plane, and according to the company creates surfaces of gain, phase and efficiency.

Haynes said capture conditions were carefully designed to mimic true ET operation and provide accurate modelling of linearity and efficiency over a wide dynamic range.