2,863 research outputs found
Design and Implementation of an RF Front-End for Software Defined Radios
Software Defined Radios have brought a major reformation in the design standards for radios, in which a large portion of the functionality is implemented through pro grammable signal processing devices, giving the radio the ability to change its op erating parameters to accommodate new features and capabilities. A software radio approach reduces the content of radio frequency and other analog components of the traditional radios and emphasizes digital signal processing to enhance overall receiver flexibility. Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) are a suitable technology for the hardware platform as they offer the potential of hardware-like performance coupled with software-like programmability.
Software defined radio is a very broad field, encompassing the design of various technologies all the way from the antenna to RF, IF, and baseband digital design. The RF section primarily consists of analog hardware modules. The IF and baseband sections are primarily digital. It is the general process of the radio to convert the incoming signal from RF to IF and then IF to baseband for better signal processing system.
In this thesis, some of major building blocks of a Software defined radio are de signed and implemented using FPGAs. The design of a Digital front end, which provides the bridge between the baseband and analog RF portions of a wireless receiver, is synthesized. The Digital front end receiver consists of a digital down converter(DDC) which in turn comprises of a direct digital frequency synthesizer (DDFS), a phase accumulator and a low pass filter. The signal processing block
of the DDFS is executed using Co-ordinate Rotation Digital Computer (CORDIC) iii
Abstract
algorithm. Cascaded-Integrator-Comb filters (CIC) are implemented for changing the sample rate of the incoming data. Application of a DDC includes software ra dios, multicarrier, multimode digital receivers, micro and pico cell systems,broadband data applications, instrumentation and test equipment and in-building wireless tele phony. Also, in this thesis, interfaces for connecting Texas Instruments high speed and high resolution Analog-to-Digital converters (ADC) and Digital-to-Analog converters (DAC) with Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGAs are also implemented and demonstrated
A digital polar transmitter for multi-band OFDM Ultra-WideBand
Linear power amplifiers used to implement the Ultra-Wideband standard must be
backed off from optimum power efficiency to meet the standard specifications and
the power efficiency suffers. The problem of low efficiency can be mitigated by polar
modulation. Digital polar architectures have been employed on numerous wireless
standards like GSM, EDGE, and WLAN, where the fractional bandwidths achieved
are only about 1%, and the power levels achieved are often in the vicinity of 20 dBm.
Can the architecture be employed on wireless standards with low-power and high
fractional bandwidth requirements and yet achieve good power efficiency?
To answer these question, this thesis studies the application of a digital polar transmitter
architecture with parallel amplifier stages for UWB. The concept of the digital
transmitter is motivated and inspired by three factors. First, unrelenting advances
in the CMOS technology in deep-submicron process and the prevalence of low-cost
Digital Signal processing have resulted in the realization of higher level of integration
using digitally intensive approaches. Furthermore, the architecture is an evolution
of polar modulation, which is known for high power efficiency in other wireless applications.
Finally, the architecture is operated as a digital-to-analog converter which
circumvents the use of converters in conventional transmitters.
Modeling and simulation of the system architecture is performed on the Agilent Advanced
Design System Ptolemy simulation platform. First, by studying the envelope
signal, we found that envelope clipping results in a reduction in the peak-to-average
power ratio which in turn improves the error vector magnitude performance (figure
of merit for the study). In addition, we have demonstrated that a resolution of three
bits suffices for the digital polar transmitter when envelope clipping is performed.
Next, this thesis covers a theoretical derivation for the estimate of the error vector
magnitude based on the resolution, quantization and phase noise errors. An analysis
on the process variations - which result in gain and delay mismatches - for a
digital transmitter architecture with four bits ensues. The above studies allow RF
designers to estimate the number of bits required and the amount of distortion that
can be tolerated in the system.
Next, a study on the circuit implementation was conducted. A DPA that comprises
7 parallel RF amplifiers driven by a constant RF phase-modulated signal and 7
cascode transistors (individually connected in series with the bottom amplifiers)
digitally controlled by a 3-bit digitized envelope signal to reconstruct the UWB
signal at the output. Through the use of NFET models from the IBM 130-nm
technology, our simulation reveals that our DPA is able to achieve an EVM of -
22 dB. The DPA simulations have been performed at 3.432 GHz centre frequency
with a channel bandwidth of 528 MHz, which translates to a fractional bandwidth
of 15.4%. Drain efficiencies of 13.2/19.5/21.0% have been obtained while delivering
-1.9/2.5/5.5 dBm of output power and consuming 5/9/17 mW of power.
In addition, we performed a yield analysis on the digital polar amplifier, based
on unit-weighted and binary-weighted architecture, when gain variations are introduced
in all the individual stages. The dynamic element matching method is also
introduced for the unit-weighted digital polar transmitter. Monte Carlo simulations
reveal that when the gain of the amplifiers are allowed to vary at a mean of 1 with a
standard deviation of 0.2, the binary-weighted architecture obtained a yield of 79%,
while the yields of the unit-weighted architectures are in the neighbourhood of 95%.
Moreover, the dynamic element matching technique demonstrates an improvement
in the yield by approximately 3%.
Finally, a hardware implementation for this architecture based on software-defined
arbitrary waveform generators is studied. In this section, we demonstrate that the error vector magnitude results obtained with a four-stage binary-weighted digital polar
transmitter under ideal combining conditions fulfill the European Computer Manufacturers
Association requirements. The proposed experimental setup, believed to
be the first ever attempted, confirm the feasibility of a digital polar transmitter architecture
for Ultra-Wideband. In addition, we propose a number of power combining
techniques suitable for the hardware implementation. Spatial power combining, in
particular, shows a high potential for the digital polar transmitter architecture.
The above studies demonstrate the feasibility of the digital polar architecture with
good power efficiency for a wideband wireless standard with low-power and high
fractional bandwidth requirements
Hardware Architecture of a QAM Receiver for Short-Range Optical Communications
[EN] Short-reach optical fiber communications systems aim to achieve high throughput, in the order of tens of Gbps. The implementation of these high-speed systems requires parallel processing, which makes low-complexity designs of their subsystems a key to the successful large-scale deployment of this technology. Half-Cycle Nyquist Subcarrier Modulation (HC-SCM) was originally suggested for these systems with the goal of using as much bandwidth as possible and, therefore, achieving high communication rates. Recently, Oversampled Subcarrier Modulation (OVS-SCM) was proposed as an alternative more computational efficient than HC-SCM and also with a better spectral efficiency. This paper proposes a hardware-efficient architecture for an OVS-SCM receiver, which takes into account the inherent parallel processing of these systems. This receiver takes 16 samples in parallel from a 5 GSa/s analog-to-digital converter with a 3.2 GHz 3 dB bandwidth. Design solutions for the frame detection block, the mixer, the resampler, the fractional interpolator, the matched filter and the timing estimator are presented. Our results show that, compared to the HC-SCM receiver, this proposal reduces the computational load of the downconverter stages by 90%. FPGA implementation results are given to demonstrate that our proposal can be implemented in state-of-the-art devices.This work was supported in part by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 under Grants RTI2018-101658-B100 and PID2021-126514OB-I00, and in part by the European Union through "ERDF Away of making Europe."Valls Coquillat, J.; Torres Carot, V.; Pérez Pascual, MA.; Almenar Terre, V. (2023). Hardware Architecture of a QAM Receiver for Short-Range Optical Communications. Journal of Lightwave Technology. 41(2):451-461. https://doi.org/10.1109/JLT.2022.321735745146141
Robust concurrent remote entanglement between two superconducting qubits
Entangling two remote quantum systems which never interact directly is an
essential primitive in quantum information science and forms the basis for the
modular architecture of quantum computing. When protocols to generate these
remote entangled pairs rely on using traveling single photon states as carriers
of quantum information, they can be made robust to photon losses, unlike
schemes that rely on continuous variable states. However, efficiently detecting
single photons is challenging in the domain of superconducting quantum circuits
because of the low energy of microwave quanta. Here, we report the realization
of a robust form of concurrent remote entanglement based on a novel microwave
photon detector implemented in the superconducting circuit quantum
electrodynamics (cQED) platform of quantum information. Remote entangled pairs
with a fidelity of are generated at Hz. Our experiment
opens the way for the implementation of the modular architecture of quantum
computation with superconducting qubits.Comment: Main paper: 7 pages, 4 figures; Appendices: 14 pages, 9 figure
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Array Architectures and Physical Layer Design for Millimeter-Wave Communications Beyond 5G
Ever increasing demands in mobile data rates have resulted in exploration of millimeter-wave (mmW) frequencies for the next generation (5G) wireless networks. Communications at mmW frequencies is presented with two keys challenges. Firstly, high propagation loss requires base stations (BSs) and user equipment (UEs) to use a large number of antennas and narrow beams to close the link with sufficient received signal power. Consequently, communications using narrow beams create a new challenge in channel estimation and link establishment based on fine angular probing. Current mmW system use analog phased arrays that can probe only one angle at the time which results in high latency during link establishment and channel tracking. It is desirable to design low latency beam training by exploring both physical layer designs and array architectures that could replace current 5G approaches and pave the way to the communications for frequency bands in higher mmW band and sub-THz region where larger antenna arrays and communications bandwidth can be exploited. To this end, we propose a novel signal processing techniques exploiting unique properties of mmW channel, and show both theoretically, in simulation and experiments its advantages over conventional approaches. Secondly, we explore different array architecture design and analyze their trade-offs between spectral efficiency and power consumption and area. For comprehensive comparison, we have developed a methodology for optimal design of system parameters for different array architecture candidates based on the spectral efficiency target, and use these parameters to estimate the array area and power consumption based on the circuits reported in the literature. We show that the hybrid analog and digital architectures have severe scalability concerns in radio frequency signal distribution with increased array size and spatial multiplexing levels, while the fully-digital array architectures have the best performance and power/area trade-offs.The developed approaches are based on a cross-disciplinary research that combines innovation in model based signal processing, machine learning, and radio hardware. This work is the first to apply compressive sensing (CS), a signal processing tool that exploits sparsity of mmW channel model, to accelerate beam training of mmW cellular system. The algorithm is designed to address practical issues including the requirement of cell discovery and synchronization that involves estimation of angular channel together with carrier frequency offset and timing offsets. We have analyzed the algorithm performance in the 5G compliant simulation and showed that an order of magnitude saving is achieved in initial access latency for the desired channel estimation accuracy. Moreover, we are the first to develop and implement a neural network assisted compressive beam alignment to deal with hardware impairments in mmW radios. We have used 60GHz mmW testbed to perform experiments and show that neural networks approach enhances alignment rate compared to CS. To further accelerate beam training, we proposed a novel frequency selective probing beams using the true-time-delay (TTD) analog array architecture. Our approach utilizes different subcarriers to scan different directions, and achieves a single-shot beam alignment, the fastest approach reported to date. Our comprehensive analysis of different array architectures and exploration of emerging architectures enabled us to develop an order of magnitude faster and energy efficient approaches for initial access and channel estimation in mmW systems
The 30/20 GHz flight experiment system, phase 2. Volume 2: Experiment system description
A detailed technical description of the 30/20 GHz flight experiment system is presented. The overall communication system is described with performance analyses, communication operations, and experiment plans. Hardware descriptions of the payload are given with the tradeoff studies that led to the final design. The spacecraft bus which carries the payload is discussed and its interface with the launch vehicle system is described. Finally, the hardwares and the operations of the terrestrial segment are presented
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