Digitally-Enhanced Software-Defined Radio Receiver Robust to Out-of-Band Interference

A software-defined radio (SDR) receiver with improved robustness to out-of-band interference (OBI) is presented. Two main challenges are identified for an OBI-robust SDR receiver: out-of-band nonlinearity and harmonic mixing. Voltage gain at RF is avoided, and instead realized at baseband in combination with low-pass filtering to mitigate blockers and improve out-of-band IIP3. Two alternative “iterative” harmonic-rejection (HR) techniques are presented to achieve high HR robust to mismatch: a) an analog two-stage polyphase HR concept, which enhances the HR to more than 60 dB; b) a digital adaptive interference cancelling (AIC) technique, which can suppress one dominating harmonic by at least 80 dB. An accurate multiphase clock generator is presented for a mismatch-robust HR. A proof-of-concept receiver is implemented in 65 nm CMOS. Measurements show 34 dB gain, 4 dB NF, and 3.5 dBm in-band IIP3 while the out-of-band IIP3 is + 16 dBm without fine tuning. The measured RF bandwidth is up to 6 GHz and the 8-phase LO works up to 0.9 GHz (master clock up to 7.2 GHz). At 0.8 GHz LO, the analog two-stage polyphase HR achieves a second to sixth order HR > dB over 40 chips, while the digital AIC technique achieves HR > 80 dB for the dominating harmonic. The total power consumption is 50 mA from a 1.2 V supply

NIKEL: Electronics and data acquisition for kilopixels kinetic inductance camera

A prototype of digital frequency multiplexing electronics allowing the real time monitoring of microwave kinetic inductance detector (MKIDs) arrays for mm-wave astronomy has been developed. Thanks to the frequency multiplexing, it can monitor simultaneously 400 pixels over a 500 MHz bandwidth and requires only two coaxial cables for instrumenting such a large array. The chosen solution and the performances achieved are presented in this paper.Comment: 21 pages, 14 figure

Theory and design of M-channel maximally decimated quadrature mirror filters with arbitrary M, having the perfect-reconstruction property

Based on the concept of losslessness in digital filter structures, this paper derives a general class of maximally decimated M-channel quadrature mirror filter banks that lead to perfect reconstruction. The perfect-reconstruction property guarantees that the reconstructed signalhat{x} (n)is a delayed version of the input signal x (n), i.e.,hat{x} (n) = x (n - n_{0}). It is shown that such a property can be satisfied if the alias component matrix (AC matrix for short) is unitary on the unit circle of the z plane. The number of channels M is arbitrary, and when M is two, the results reduce to certain recently reported 2-channel perfect-reconstruction QMF structures. A procedure, based on recently reported FIR cascaded-lattice structures, is presented for optimal design of such FIR M-channel filter banks. Design examples are included

Guest editorial for the special issue on software-defined radio transceivers and circuits for 5G wireless communications

Yichuang Sun, Baoyong Chi, and Heng Zhang, Guest Editorial for the Special Issue on Software-Defined Radio Transceivers and Circuits for 5G Wireless Communications, published in IEEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II: Express Briefs, Vol. 63 (1): 1-3, January 2016, doi: https://doi.org/10.1109/TCSII.2015.2506979.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Design of doubly-complementary IIR digital filters using a single complex allpass filter, with multirate applications

It is shown that a large class of real-coefficient doubly-complementary IIR transfer function pairs can be implemented by means of a single complex allpass filter. For a real input sequence, the real part of the output sequence corresponds to the output of one of the transfer functions G(z) (for example, lowpass), whereas the imaginary part of the output sequence corresponds to its "complementary" filter H(z)(for example, highpass). The resulting implementation is structurally lossless, and hence the implementations of G(z) and H(z) have very low passband sensitivity. Numerical design examples are included, and a typical numerical example shows that the new implementation with 4 bits per multiplier is considerably better than a direct form implementation with 9 bits per multiplier. Multirate filter bank applications (quadrature mirror filtering) are outlined

Theory and design of uniform DFT, parallel, quadrature mirror filter banks

In this paper, the theory of uniform DFT, parallel, quadrature mirror filter (QMF) banks is developed. The QMF equations, i.e., equations that need to be satisfied for exact reconstruction of the input signal, are derived. The concept of decimated filters is introduced, and structures for both analysis and synthesis banks are derived using this concept. The QMF equations, as well as closed-form expressions for the synthesis filters needed for exact reconstruction of the input signalx(n), are also derived using this concept. In general, the reconstructed. signalhat{x}(n)suffers from three errors: aliasing, amplitude distortion, and phase distortion. Conditions for exact reconstruction (i.e., all three distortions are zero, andhat{x}(n)is equal to a delayed version ofx(n))of the input signal are derived in terms of the decimated filters. Aliasing distortion can always be completely canceled. Once aliasing is canceled, it is possible to completely eliminate amplitude distortion (if suitable IIR filters are employed) and completely eliminate phase distortion (if suitable FIR filters are employed). However, complete elimination of all three errors is possible only with some simple, pathalogical stable filter transfer functions. In general, once aliasing is canceled, the other distortions can be minimized rather than completely eliminated. Algorithms for this are presented. The properties of FIR filter banks are then investigated. Several aspects of IIR filter banks are also studied using the same framework

Analysis of mismatch impact on image rejection ratio for passive polyphase filters

Passive polyphase filters (PPFs) are useful symmetric RC networks for processing analog quadrature signals. Passive polyphase filters are also used to implement differential-quadrature or quadrature-differential converters. The quality of these quadrature signals is essential to achieve good performance in modern communication systems. However, mismatch effects can produce notable degradation in the PPF frequency response, and this results in an important reduction in quadrature signal quality, being amplitude balance and phase offset notably affected. Both these errors could be summarized and evaluated together considering image rejection ratio as a figure of merit. This work deepens in the analysis of mismatch impact on PPF, studying image rejection ratio degradation for 2 PPF types, and a systematic method is proposed to obtain the worst case of mismatch in PPFs with any number of stages. It has been validated in a 65-nm CMOS technology

Pseudo-Stereo Audio Processor

Due to both technical and resource limitations, non-professional audio production must often record with a single microphone, creating a mono audio signal. Even some originally multi-channel audio files often combine the separate channels into a single channel to save memory. However, this channel limitation makes any music held within the audio duller during listening. The Pseudo-Stereo Audio Processor remedies this situation, introducing a quadrature phase shift onto a given single-channel audio signal, producing multiple phase shifted output signals. These separate fixed-phase output signals are then recombined to produce a variable phase difference, emulated two-channel version of the input signal, allowing for an easy post-production sound quality enhancement of a single-channel signal that independent or small-scale audio recording studios could utilize. Further, this method of quadrature filtering produces completely decorrelated output signals using a Hilbert Transform, creating unique auditory effects useful in certain aspects of psychoacoustic research much harder to obtain through other means

The role of lossless systems in modern digital signal processing: a tutorial

A self-contained discussion of discrete-time lossless systems and their properties and relevance in digital signal processing is presented. The basic concept of losslessness is introduced, and several algebraic properties of lossless systems are studied. An understanding of these properties is crucial in order to exploit the rich usefulness of lossless systems in digital signal processing. Since lossless systems typically have many input and output terminals, a brief review of multiinput multioutput systems is included. The most general form of a rational lossless transfer matrix is presented along with synthesis procedures for the FIR (finite impulse response) case. Some applications of lossless systems in signal processing are presented