Welcome

Welcome to the IMS Digital PreDistortion (DPD) competition home page!

Introduction

Digital Predistortion (DPD) has become a widely adopted technique for linearizing RF transmitters. However, with the continuous evolution of high-efficiency amplification architectures and modern communication signal formats, the need for advancing DPD technologies remains critical.

To support innovation in this field, the “Power Amplifier Linearization Through Digital Pre-distortion” Student Design Competition (SDC) was launched at the International Microwave Symposium in 2014 by Chalmers University. You can check the history of the DPD SDC. Although the competition has been held intermittently since its inception, it is making a return this year!

Beyond fostering innovation, the DPD competition also provides a standardized platform for comparing digital linearization algorithms. Thanks to remote access capabilities, participants can evaluate their solutions using a common, state-of-the-art measurement setup.

Interested in participating?

👉 Register for the IMS2025 DPD Student Design Competition here!

How do I get started?

This webpage offers everything you need to begin. It includes comprehensive information and tools for remotely accessing the competition’s advanced test setup, allowing you to evaluate your algorithms ahead of time.

👉 Check out the Competition Access Details to get started.

This year’s edition

This year, the DPD Competition is once again organized by the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC). We extend our sincere thanks to Rohde & Schwarz for sponsoring the competition with advanced measurement equipment, and to the IEEE MTT-15 and MTT-12 Technical Committees for their ongoing support in organizing, promoting, and funding the prizes awarded in this Student Design Competition (SDC).

Special thanks go to Hermann Boss (Rohde & Schwarz) for his instrumental role in configuring and making the measurement instrumentation available. We also gratefully acknowledge our colleagues at Cardiff University for donating the LMBA power amplifier used in this year’s competition.

This homepage has been updated to include all the necessary instructions and tools to remotely access this year’s measurement platform, known as remoteUPCLab. This setup, deployed by UPC in Castelldefels, Barcelona, Spain, features a vector signal generator, an LMBA power amplifier evaluation board, and a signal analyzer. It will be used for the onsite DPD student design competition at IMS2025 in San Francisco.

Comprehensive details on how to access and use the remoteUPCLab system, including files for signal generation, waveform upload/download, and DPD performance evaluation (all within the MATLAB environment), can be found under the Competition Access Details section. A full description of the measurement setup is available in the Measurement Setup section.

Contact persons for IMS2025:

• Pere L. Gilabert (pere.lluis.gilabert@upc.edu), UPC, Barcelona, Spain.
• Gabriel Montoro (gabriel.montoro@upc.edu), UPC, Barcelona, Spain.