Mobile communication devices, or “mobile devices”, are widely used and increasingly relied upon for business and personal communications. As mobile devices have become ever more powerful, energy efficiency has become an increasingly important design objective. For example, the trend toward higher data rates in the uplink path for mobile communications can result in higher power consumption by a mobile device during transmission.
Because transmission during mobile communications is becoming an increasing contributor to overall power consumption, improving transmit efficiency by the mobile device power amplifier (PA) is desirable. However, the high linearity requirements of existing and developing wireless communications standards impose significant operating constraints on the mobile device PA. Consequently, there remain significant challenges to providing a mobile device capable of achieving improved transmit efficiency without significantly compromising performance.