Summary Adaptive feed‐forward (FF) linearization schemes of power amplifiers provide high distortion cancelation and adjacent channel power ratio (ACPR) reduction. However, FF schemes are very sensitive to imbalances in the circuit parameters used to achieve signal cancelation. In this paper, an FF linearization circuit is analyzed using the orthogonalization of the nonlinear model and considering the effects of complex gain errors in the signal and distortion cancelation loops on the overall performance of the FF linearizer. The analysis enables the effective signal‐to‐distortion ratio (SDR) and ACPR to be estimated from FF circuit model. It is shown that complex gain errors in the distortion cancelation loop have a more significant effect on in‐band distortion than out‐of‐band distortion, which means that the design of FF linearizers based on ACPR improvement is not optimal. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. In this paper, a feed‐forward (FF) linearization circuit is analyzed using the orthogonalization of the nonlinear model and considering the effects of complex gain errors in the signal and distortion cancelation loops on the overall performance of the FF linearizer. It is shown that complex gain errors in the distortion cancelation loop have a more significant effect on in‐band distortion than out‐of‐band distortion, which means that the design of FF linearizers based on adjacent channel power ratio improvement is not optimal.