Reconfigurable Receiver Front-Ends for Advanced Telecommunication Technologies

The exponential growth of converging technologies, including augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, machine-to-machine and machine-to-human interactions, biomedical and environmental sensory systems, and artificial intelligence, is driving the need for robust infrastructural systems capable of handling vast data volumes between end users and service providers. This demand has prompted a significant evolution in wireless communication, with 5G and subsequent generations requiring exponentially improved spectral and energy efficiency compared to their predecessors. Achieving this entails intricate strategies such as advanced digital modulations, broader channel bandwidths, complex spectrum sharing, and carrier aggregation scenarios. A particularly challenging aspect arises in the form of non-contiguous aggregation of up to six carrier components across the frequency range 1 (FR1). This necessitates receiver front-ends to effectively reject out-of-band (OOB) interferences while maintaining high-performance in-band (IB) operation. Reconfigurability becomes pivotal in such dynamic environments, where frequency resource allocation, signal strength, and interference levels continuously change. Software-defined radios (SDRs) and cognitive radios (CRs) emerge as solutions, with direct RF-sampling receivers offering a suitable architecture in which the frequency translation is entirely performed in digital domain to avoid analog mixing issues. Moreover, direct RF- sampling receivers facilitate spectrum observation, which is crucial to identify free zones, and detect interferences. Acoustic and distributed filters offer impressive dynamic range and sharp roll off characteristics, but their bulkiness and lack of electronic adjustment capabilities limit their practicality. Active filters, on the other hand, present opportunities for integration in advanced CMOS technology, addressing size constraints and providing versatile programmability. However, concerns about power consumption, noise generation, and linearity in active filters require careful consideration.This thesis primarily focuses on the design and implementation of a low-voltage, low-power RFFE tailored for direct sampling receivers in 5G FR1 applications. The RFFE consists of a balun low-noise amplifier (LNA), a Q-enhanced filter, and a programmable gain amplifier (PGA). The balun-LNA employs noise cancellation, current reuse, and gm boosting for wideband gain and input impedance matching. Leveraging FD-SOI technology allows for programmable gain and linearity via body biasing. The LNA's operational state ranges between high-performance and high-tolerance modes, which are apt for sensitivityand blocking tests, respectively. The Q-enhanced filter adopts noise-cancelling, current-reuse, and programmable Gm-cells to realize a fourth-order response using two resonators. The fourth-order filter response is achieved by subtracting the individual response of these resonators. Compared to cascaded and magnetically coupled fourth-order filters, this technique maintains the large dynamic range of second-order resonators. Fabricated in 22-nm FD-SOI technology, the RFFE achieves 1%-40% fractional bandwidth (FBW) adjustability from 1.7 GHz to 6.4 GHz, 4.6 dB noise figure (NF) and an OOB third-order intermodulation intercept point (IIP3) of 22 dBm. Furthermore, concerning the implementation uncertainties and potential variations of temperature and supply voltage, design margins have been considered and a hybrid calibration scheme is introduced. A combination of on-chip and off-chip calibration based on noise response is employed to effectively adjust the quality factors, Gm-cells, and resonance frequencies, ensuring desired bandpass response. To optimize and accelerate the calibration process, a reinforcement learning (RL) agent is used.Anticipating future trends, the concept of the Q-enhanced filter extends to a multiple-mode filter for 6G upper mid-band applications. Covering the frequency range from 8 to 20 GHz, this RFFE can be configured as a fourth-order dual-band filter, two bandpass filters (BPFs) with an OOB notch, or a BPF with an IB notch. In cognitive radios, the filter’s transmission zeros can be positioned with respect to the carrier frequencies of interfering signals to yield over 50 dB blocker rejection

Conceptual mechanization studies for a horizon definition spacecraft communications and data handling subsystem

Conceptual mechanization for horizon definition spacecraft communications and data handling subsyste

Introduction to the special issue on Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits (RFIC) design techniques

Peer reviewe

Hardware Development of an Ultra-Wideband System for High Precision Localization Applications

A precise localization system in an indoor environment has been developed. The developed system is based on transmitting and receiving picosecond pulses and carrying out a complete narrow-pulse, signal detection and processing scheme in the time domain. The challenges in developing such a system include: generating ultra wideband (UWB) pulses, pulse dispersion due to antennas, modeling of complex propagation channels with severe multipath effects, need for extremely high sampling rates for digital processing, synchronization between the tag and receivers’ clocks, clock jitter, local oscillator (LO) phase noise, frequency offset between tag and receivers’ LOs, and antenna phase center variation. For such a high precision system with mm or even sub-mm accuracy, all these effects should be accounted for and minimized. In this work, we have successfully addressed many of the above challenges and developed a stand-alone system for positioning both static and dynamic targets with approximately 2 mm and 6 mm of 3-D accuracy, respectively. The results have exceeded the state of the art for any commercially available UWB positioning system and are considered a great milestone in developing such technology. My contributions include the development of a picosecond pulse generator, an extremely wideband omni-directional antenna, a highly directive UWB receiving antenna with low phase center variation, an extremely high data rate sampler, and establishment of a non-synchronized UWB system architecture. The developed low cost sampler, for example, can be easily utilized to sample narrow pulses with up to 1000 GS/s while the developed antennas can cover over 6 GHz bandwidth with minimal pulse distortion. The stand-alone prototype system is based on tracking a target using 4-6 base stations and utilizing a triangulation scheme to find its location in space. Advanced signal processing algorithms based on first peak and leading edge detection have been developed and extensively evaluated to achieve high accuracy 3-D localization. 1D, 2D and 3D experiments have been carried out and validated using an optical reference system which provides better than 0.3 mm 3-D accuracy. Such a high accuracy wireless localization system should have a great impact on the operating room of the future

Multi-stage noise shaping (MASH) delta-sigma modulators for wideband and multi-standard applications

Imperial Users onl

GNSS array-based acquisition: theory and implementation

This Dissertation addresses the signal acquisition problem using antenna arrays in the general framework of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) receivers. The term GNSS classi es those navigation systems based on a constellation of satellites, which emit ranging signals useful for positioning. Although the American GPS is already available, which coexists with the renewed Russian Glonass, the forthcoming European contribution (Galileo) along with the Chinese Compass will be operative soon. Therefore, a variety of satellite constellations and signals will be available in the next years. GNSSs provide the necessary infrastructures for a myriad of applications and services that demand a robust and accurate positioning service. The positioning availability must be guaranteed all the time, specially in safety-critical and mission-critical services. Examining the threats against the service availability, it is important to take into account that all the present and the forthcoming GNSSs make use of Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) techniques. The ranging signals are received with very low precorrelation signal-to-noise ratio (in the order of ���22 dB for a receiver operating at the Earth surface). Despite that the GNSS CDMA processing gain o ers limited protection against Radio Frequency interferences (RFI), an interference with a interference-to-signal power ratio that exceeds the processing gain can easily degrade receivers' performance or even deny completely the GNSS service, specially conventional receivers equipped with minimal or basic level of protection towards RFIs. As a consequence, RFIs (either intentional or unintentional) remain as the most important cause of performance degradation. A growing concern of this problem has appeared in recent times. Focusing our attention on the GNSS receiver, it is known that signal acquisition has the lowest sensitivity of the whole receiver operation, and, consequently, it becomes the performance bottleneck in the presence of interfering signals. A single-antenna receiver can make use of time and frequency diversity to mitigate interferences, even though the performance of these techniques is compromised in low SNR scenarios or in the presence of wideband interferences. On the other hand, antenna arrays receivers can bene t from spatial-domain processing, and thus mitigate the e ects of interfering signals. Spatial diversity has been traditionally applied to the signal tracking operation of GNSS receivers. However, initial tracking conditions depend on signal acquisition, and there are a number of scenarios in which the acquisition process can fail as stated before. Surprisingly, to the best of our knowledge, the application of antenna arrays to GNSS signal acquisition has not received much attention. This Thesis pursues a twofold objective: on the one hand, it proposes novel arraybased acquisition algorithms using a well-established statistical detection theory framework, and on the other hand demonstrates both their real-time implementation feasibility and their performance in realistic scenarios. The Dissertation starts with a brief introduction to GNSS receivers fundamentals, providing some details about the navigation signals structure and the receiver's architecture of both GPS and Galileo systems. It follows with an analysis of GNSS signal acquisition as a detection problem, using the Neyman-Pearson (NP) detection theory framework and the single-antenna acquisition signal model. The NP approach is used here to derive both the optimum detector (known as clairvoyant detector ) and the sov called Generalized Likelihood Ratio Test (GLRT) detector, which is the basis of almost all of the current state-of-the-art acquisition algorithms. Going further, a novel detector test statistic intended to jointly acquire a set of GNSS satellites is obtained, thus reducing both the acquisition time and the required computational resources. The eff ects of the front-end bandwidth in the acquisition are also taken into account. Then, the GLRT is extended to the array signal model to obtain an original detector which is able to mitigate temporally uncorrelated interferences even if the array is unstructured and moderately uncalibrated, thus becoming one of the main contributions of this Dissertation. The key statistical feature is the assumption of an arbitrary and unknown covariance noise matrix, which attempts to capture the statistical behavior of the interferences and other non-desirable signals, while exploiting the spatial dimension provided by antenna arrays. Closed form expressions for the detection and false alarm probabilities are provided. Performance and interference rejection capability are modeled and compared both to their theoretical bound. The proposed array-based acquisition algorithm is also compared to conventional acquisition techniques performed after blind null-steering beamformer approaches, such as the power minimization algorithm. Furthermore, the detector is analyzed under realistic conditions, accounting for the presence of errors in the covariance matrix estimation, residual Doppler and delay errors, and signal quantization e ects. Theoretical results are supported by Monte Carlo simulations. As another main contribution of this Dissertation, the second part of the work deals with the design and the implementation of a novel Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA)-based GNSS real-time antenna-array receiver platform. The platform is intended to be used as a research tool tightly coupled with software de ned GNSS receivers. A complete signal reception chain including the antenna array and the multichannel phase-coherent RF front-end for the GPS L1/ Galileo E1 was designed, implemented and tested. The details of the digital processing section of the platform, such as the array signal statistics extraction modules, are also provided. The design trade-o s and the implementation complexities were carefully analyzed and taken into account. As a proof-of-concept, the problem of GNSS vulnerability to interferences was addressed using the presented platform. The array-based acquisition algorithms introduced in this Dissertation were implemented and tested under realistic conditions. The performance of the algorithms were compared to single antenna acquisition techniques, measured under strong in-band interference scenarios, including narrow/wide band interferers and communication signals. The platform was designed to demonstrate the implementation feasibility of novel array-based acquisition algorithms, leaving the rest of the receiver operations (mainly, tracking, navigation message decoding, code and phase observables, and basic Position, Velocity and Time (PVT) solution) to a Software De ned Radio (SDR) receiver running in a personal computer, processing in real-time the spatially- ltered signal sample stream coming from the platform using a Gigabit Ethernet bus data link. In the last part of this Dissertation, we close the loop by designing and implementing such software receiver. The proposed software receiver targets multi-constellation/multi-frequency architectures, pursuing the goals of e ciency, modularity, interoperability, and exibility demanded by user domains that require non-standard features, such as intermediate signals or data extraction and algorithms interchangeability. In this context, we introduce an open-source, real-time GNSS software de ned receiver (so-named GNSS-SDR) that contributes with several novel features such as the use of software design patterns and shared memory techniques to manage e ciently the data ow between receiver blocks, the use of hardware-accelerated instructions for time-consuming vector operations like carrier wipe-o and code correlation, and the availability to compile and run on multiple software platforms and hardware architectures. At this time of writing (April 2012), the receiver enjoys of a 2-dimensional Distance Root Mean Square (DRMS) error lower than 2 meters for a GPS L1 C/A scenario with 8 satellites in lock and a Horizontal Dilution Of Precision (HDOP) of 1.2.Esta tesis aborda el problema de la adquisición de la señal usando arrays de antenas en el marco general de los receptores de Sistemas Globales de Navegación por Satélite (GNSS). El término GNSS engloba aquellos sistemas de navegación basados en una constelación de satélites que emiten señales útiles para el posicionamiento. Aunque el GPS americano ya está disponible, coexistiendo con el renovado sistema ruso GLONASS, actualmente se está realizando un gran esfuerzo para que la contribución europea (Galileo), junto con el nuevo sistema chino Compass, estén operativos en breve. Por lo tanto, una gran variedad de constelaciones de satélites y señales estarán disponibles en los próximos años. Estos sistemas proporcionan las infraestructuras necesarias para una multitud de aplicaciones y servicios que demandan un servicio de posicionamiento confiable y preciso. La disponibilidad de posicionamiento se debe garantizar en todo momento, especialmente en los servicios críticos para la seguridad de las personas y los bienes. Cuando examinamos las amenazas de la disponibilidad del servicio que ofrecen los GNSSs, es importante tener en cuenta que todos los sistemas presentes y los sistemas futuros ya planificados hacen uso de técnicas de multiplexación por división de código (CDMA). Las señales transmitidas por los satélites son recibidas con una relación señal-ruido (SNR) muy baja, medida antes de la correlación (del orden de -22 dB para un receptor ubicado en la superficie de la tierra). A pesar de que la ganancia de procesado CDMA ofrece una protección inherente contra las interferencias de radiofrecuencia (RFI), esta protección es limitada. Una interferencia con una relación de potencia de interferencia a potencia de la señal que excede la ganancia de procesado puede degradar el rendimiento de los receptores o incluso negar por completo el servicio GNSS. Este riesgo es especialmente importante en receptores convencionales equipados con un nivel mínimo o básico de protección frente las RFIs. Como consecuencia, las RFIs (ya sean intencionadas o no intencionadas), se identifican como la causa más importante de la degradación del rendimiento en GNSS. El problema esta causando una preocupación creciente en los últimos tiempos, ya que cada vez hay más servicios que dependen de los GNSSs Si centramos la atención en el receptor GNSS, es conocido que la adquisición de la señal tiene la menor sensibilidad de todas las operaciones del receptor, y, en consecuencia, se convierte en el factor limitador en la presencia de señales interferentes. Un receptor de una sola antena puede hacer uso de la diversidad en tiempo y frecuencia para mitigar las interferencias, aunque el rendimiento de estas técnicas se ve comprometido en escenarios con baja SNR o en presencia de interferencias de banda ancha. Por otro lado, los receptores basados en múltiples antenas se pueden beneficiar del procesado espacial, y por lo tanto mitigar los efectos de las señales interferentes. La diversidad espacial se ha aplicado tradicionalmente a la operación de tracking de la señal en receptores GNSS. Sin embargo, las condiciones iniciales del tracking dependen del resultado de la adquisición de la señal, y como hemos visto antes, hay un número de situaciones en las que el proceso de adquisición puede fallar. En base a nuestro grado de conocimiento, la aplicación de los arrays de antenas a la adquisición de la señal GNSS no ha recibido mucha atención, sorprendentemente. El objetivo de esta tesis doctoral es doble: por un lado, proponer nuevos algoritmos para la adquisición basados en arrays de antenas, usando como marco la teoría de la detección de señal estadística, y por otro lado, demostrar la viabilidad de su implementación y ejecución en tiempo real, así como su medir su rendimiento en escenarios realistas. La tesis comienza con una breve introducción a los fundamentos de los receptores GNSS, proporcionando algunos detalles sobre la estructura de las señales de navegación y la arquitectura del receptor aplicada a los sistemas GPS y Galileo. Continua con el análisis de la adquisición GNSS como un problema de detección, aplicando la teoría del detector Neyman-Pearson (NP) y el modelo de señal de una única antena. El marco teórico del detector NP se utiliza aquí para derivar tanto el detector óptimo (conocido como detector clarividente) como la denominada Prueba Generalizada de la Razón de Verosimilitud (en inglés, Generalized Likelihood Ratio Test (GLRT)), que forma la base de prácticamente todos los algoritmos de adquisición del estado del arte actual. Yendo más lejos, proponemos un nuevo detector diseñado para adquirir simultáneamente un conjunto de satélites, por lo tanto, obtiene una reducción del tiempo de adquisición y de los recursos computacionales necesarios en el proceso, respecto a las técnicas convencionales. El efecto del ancho de banda del receptor también se ha tenido en cuenta en los análisis. A continuación, el detector GLRT se extiende al modelo de señal de array de antenas para obtener un detector nuevo que es capaz de mitigar interferencias no correladas temporalmente, incluso utilizando arrays no estructurados y moderadamente descalibrados, convirtiéndose así en una de las principales aportaciones de esta tesis. La clave del detector es asumir una matriz de covarianza de ruido arbitraria y desconocida en el modelo de señal, que trata de captar el comportamiento estadístico de las interferencias y otras señales no deseadas, mientras que utiliza la dimensión espacial proporcionada por los arrays de antenas. Se han derivado las expresiones que modelan las probabilidades teóricas de detección y falsa alarma. El rendimiento del detector y su capacidad de rechazo a interferencias se han modelado y comparado con su límite teórico. El algoritmo propuesto también ha sido comparado con técnicas de adquisición convencionales, ejecutadas utilizando la salida de conformadores de haz que utilizan algoritmos de filtrado de interferencias, como el algoritmo de minimización de la potencia. Además, el detector se ha analizado bajo condiciones realistas, representadas con la presencia de errores en la estimación de covarianzas, errores residuales en la estimación del Doppler y el retardo de señal, y los efectos de la cuantificación. Los resultados teóricos se apoyan en simulaciones de Monte Carlo. Como otra contribución principal de esta tesis, la segunda parte del trabajo trata sobre el diseño y la implementación de una nueva plataforma para receptores GNSS en tiempo real basados en array de antenas que utiliza la tecnología de matriz programable de puertas lógicas (en ingles Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA)). La plataforma está destinada a ser utilizada como una herramienta de investigación estrechamente acoplada con receptores GNSS definidos por software. Se ha diseñado, implementado y verificado la cadena completa de recepción, incluyendo el array de antenas y el front-end multi-canal para las señales GPS L1 y Galileo E1. El documento explica en detalle el procesado de señal que se realiza, como por ejemplo, la implementación del módulo de extracción de estadísticas de la señal. Los compromisos de diseño y las complejidades derivadas han sido cuidadosamente analizadas y tenidas en cuenta. La plataforma ha sido utilizada como prueba de concepto para solucionar el problema presentado de la vulnerabilidad del GNSS a las interferencias. Los algoritmos de adquisición introducidos en esta tesis se han implementado y probado en condiciones realistas. El rendimiento de los algoritmos se comparó con las técnicas de adquisición basadas en una sola antena. Se han realizado pruebas en escenarios que contienen interferencias dentro de la banda GNSS, incluyendo interferencias de banda estrecha y banda ancha y señales de comunicación. La plataforma fue diseñada para demostrar la viabilidad de la implementación de nuevos algoritmos de adquisición basados en array de antenas, dejando el resto de las operaciones del receptor (principalmente, los módulos de tracking, decodificación del mensaje de navegación, los observables de código y fase, y la solución básica de Posición, Velocidad y Tiempo (PVT)) a un receptor basado en el concepto de Radio Definida por Software (SDR), el cual se ejecuta en un ordenador personal. El receptor procesa en tiempo real las muestras de la señal filltradas espacialmente, transmitidas usando el bus de datos Gigabit Ethernet. En la última parte de esta Tesis, cerramos ciclo diseñando e implementando completamente este receptor basado en software. El receptor propuesto está dirigido a las arquitecturas de multi-constalación GNSS y multi-frecuencia, persiguiendo los objetivos de eficiencia, modularidad, interoperabilidad y flexibilidad demandada por los usuarios que requieren características no estándar, tales como la extracción de señales intermedias o de datos y intercambio de algoritmos. En este contexto, se presenta un receptor de código abierto que puede trabajar en tiempo real, llamado GNSS-SDR, que contribuye con varias características nuevas. Entre ellas destacan el uso de patrones de diseño de software y técnicas de memoria compartida para administrar de manera eficiente el uso de datos entre los bloques del receptor, el uso de la aceleración por hardware para las operaciones vectoriales más costosas, como la eliminación de la frecuencia Doppler y la correlación de código, y la disponibilidad para compilar y ejecutar el receptor en múltiples plataformas de software y arquitecturas de hardware. A fecha de la escritura de esta Tesis (abril de 2012), el receptor obtiene un rendimiento basado en la medida de la raíz cuadrada del error cuadrático medio en la distancia bidimensional (en inglés, 2-dimensional Distance Root Mean Square (DRMS) error) menor de 2 metros para un escenario GPS L1 C/A con 8 satélites visibles y una dilución de la precisión horizontal (en inglés, Horizontal Dilution Of Precision (HDOP)) de 1.2

Characterisation of MIMO radio propagation channels

Due to the incessant requirement for higher performance radio systems, wireless designers have been constantly seeking ways to improve spectrum efficiency, link reliability, service quality, and radio network coverage. During the past few years, space-time technology which employs multiple antennas along with suitable signalling schemes and receiver architectures has been seen as a powerful tool for the implementation of the aforementioned requirements. In particular, the concept of communications via Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) links has emerged as one of the major contending ideas for next generation ad-hoc and cellular systems. This is inherently due to the capacities expected when multiple antennas are employed at both ends of the radio link. Such a mobile radio propagation channel constitutes a MIMO system. Multiple antenna technologies and in particular MIMO signalling are envisaged for a number of standards such as the next generation of Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) technology known as 802.1 ln and the development of the Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) project, such as the 802.16e. For the efficient design, performance evaluation and deployment of such multiple antenna (space-time) systems, it becomes increasingly important to understand the characteristics of the spatial radio channel. This criterion has led to the development of new sounding systems, which can measure both spatial and temporal channel information. In this thesis, a novel semi-sequential wideband MIMO sounder is presented, which is suitable for high-resolution radio channel measurements. The sounder produces a frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) or chirp signal with variable bandwidth, centre frequency and waveform repetition rate. It has programmable bandwidth up to 300 MHz and waveform repetition rates up to 300 Hz, and could be used to measure conventional high- resolution delay/Doppler information as well as spatial channel information such as Direction of Arrival (DOA) and Direction of Departure (DOD). Notably the knowledge of the angular information at the link ends could be used to properly design and develop systems such as smart antennas. This thesis examines the theory of multiple antenna propagation channels, the sounding architecture required for the measurement of such spatial channel information and the signal processing which is used to quantify and analyse such measurement data. Over 700 measurement files were collected corresponding to over 175,000 impulse responses with different sounder and antenna array configurations. These included measurements in the Universal Mobile Telecommunication Systems Frequency Division Duplex (UMTS-FDD) uplink band, the 2.25 GHz and 5.8 GHz bands allocated for studio broadcast MIMO video links, and the 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz ISM bands allocated for Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) activity as well as for a wide range of future systems defined in the WiMAX project. The measurements were collected predominantly for indoor and some outdoor multiple antenna channels using sounding signals with 60 MHz, 96 MHz and 240 MHz bandwidth. A wide range of different MIMO antenna array configurations are examined in this thesis with varying space, time and frequency resolutions. Measurements can be generally subdivided into three main categories, namely measurements at different locations in the environment (static), measurements while moving at regular intervals step by step (spatial), and measurements while the receiver (or transmitter) is on the move (dynamic). High-scattering as well as time-varying MIMO channels are examined for different antenna array structures

Wide-band channel sounding in the bands above 2GHz

Modem telecommunication services require increasing data rates for both mobile and fixed applications. At frequencies in the range 2.5 GHz to 6 GHz physical constraints on the size of equipment result in antenna with moderate directivity typically with an antenna beam width of 20 degrees or greater. Thus building and ground clutter is present within the first Fresnel zones of the antenna system which gives rise to multi-path propagation. This multi-path propagation (average delay and RMS delay spread) has been investigated using a wideband FMCW channel sounder that is capable of operation at a number of frequencies. The channel sounder has been based upon a parallel architecture sounder operating within the 2 GHz band with a number of frequency conversion modules to translate operation to the new frequency bands under study. Two primary configurations have been explored. In the first of these, propagation has been measured simultaneously within the 2.5 GHz, 3.4 GHz and 5.7 GHz bands. This is believed to be novel and original. In the second configuration four parallel channels operating within the 5.7 GHz band may be operated simultaneously. This configuration supports multiple antennas at the receiver. To support the work in the bands from 2.5 GHz to 6 GHz wideband discone antenna have been designed and fabricated. A system to provide relative gain and phase calibration for up to four antennas has been developed and demonstrated. This is also believed to represent a novel method of performing antenna and array calibration. Finally, the frequency converters have been used in conjunction with additional components to provide an FMCพ sounder operating within the 60 GHz Oxygen absorption band. This work is novel in that up to 1 GHz of spectrum can be swept. To support this work a significant number of microwave components have been designed and developed. In particular a novel wide band balanced X3 multiplier and a novel impedance-matched amplitude-equaliser (to provide amplifier gain-slope equalisation) has been developed. Channel soundings have been performed at three frequencies simultaneously using band specific and common antenna. The average delay and RMS delay spread have been demonstrated to be essentially frequency independent for the environments evaluated