A Software Defined Radio Test-Bed for WLAN Front Ends

Abstract¿In our Software Defined Radio (SDR) project we aim at combining two different types of standards, Bluetooth and HiperLAN/2 on one common flexible hardware platform. The HiperLAN/2 hardware is that complex compared to the Bluetooth hardware, that Bluetooth capability may be added to the HiperLAN/2 platform at limited cost.\ud The question is how to do this. In this paper we first describe the radio front-end functions and their implementation. Subsequently the test-bed that will assist us in building the hardware platform is described. We present the method by which we use the Hiper-LAN/2 front-end for Bluetooth reception purposes. Our system consists of three parts: analog signal processing, digital channel selection and digital demodulation. The analog processing function is capable of reception of both standards. The demodulation function and channel selection function are implemented in two separate software programs (one for each standard) that allow the exploration of different design alternatives and the assessment of computational cost of the\ud receiver

Insights and approaches for low-complexity 5G small-cell base-station design for indoor dense networks

This paper investigates low-complexity approaches to small-cell base-station (SBS) design, suitable for future 5G millimeter-wave (mmWave) indoor deployments. Using large-scale antenna systems and high-bandwidth spectrum, such SBS can theoretically achieve the anticipated future data bandwidth demand of 10000 fold in the next 20 years. We look to exploit small cell distances to simplify SBS design, particularly considering dense indoor installations. We compare theoretical results, based on a link budget analysis, with the system simulation of a densely deployed indoor network using appropriate mmWave channel propagation conditions. The frequency diverse bands of 28 and 72 GHz of the mmWave spectrum are assumed in the analysis. We investigate the performance of low-complexity approaches using a minimal number of antennas at the base station and the user equipment. Using the appropriate power consumption models and the state-of-the-art sub-component power usage, we determine the total power consumption and the energy efficiency of such systems. With mmWave being typified nonline-of-sight communication, we further investigate and propose the use of direct sequence spread spectrum as a means to overcome this, and discuss the use of multipath detection and combining as a suitable mechanism to maximize link reliability

Kompetensi guru dalam pengajaran amali reka bentuk dan teknologi di Sekolah Rendah Daerah Batu Pahat

Kompetensi bermaksud kemampuan atau kecekapan seseorang individu dalam melakukan sesuatu tugasan. Kompetensi juga merujuk kepada kemampuan seseorang dalam melaksanakan sesuatu yang diperolehi melalui pendidikan dan juga merujuk kepada prestasi dan perbuatan yang rasional untuk memenuhi spesifikasi tertentu di dalam pelaksanaan tugas-tugas pendidikan. Objektif kajian ini dijalankan adalah untuk mengenalpasti tahap kompetensi guru terhadap pengajaran amali Reka Bentuk dan Teknologi di Sekolah Rendah Daerah Batu Pahat. Kajian ini berbentuk tinjauan deskriptif yang menggunakan borang soal selidik sebagai instrumen kajian. Borang soal selidik yang dibina adalah berdasarkan kepada tiga elemen iaitu elemen pengetahuan, kemahiran dan sikap. Seramai 118 orang guru yang mengajar mata pelajaran ini telah terlibat sebagai responden. Data yang dikumpulkan telah dianalisis dengan menggunakan perisian Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) versi 19 yang melibatkan statistik skor min dan ujian-T tidak bersandar. Hasil dapatan kajian yang diperolehi menunjukkan guru-guru Reka Bentuk dan Teknoogi mempunyai tahap kompetensi yang tinggi terhadap proses pengajaran amali iaitu skor min yang diperolehi pada elemen pengetahuan adalah 4.23, elemen kemahiran adalah 4.30, dan elemen sikap adalah 4.47. Dapatan kajian juga menunjukkan tidak terdapat perbezaan yang signifikan terhadap tahap kompetensi berdasarkan jantina guru lelaki dan guru perempuan dengan nilai sigifikan melebihi 0.05 iaitu sebanyak 0.059. Beberapa cadangan untuk penambahbaikan juga dikemukan dalam kajian ini. Hasil dari dapatan kajian ini dapat digunakan sebagai cadangan garis panduan kepada guru-guru Reka Bentuk dan Teknologi untuk mencapai Standard Kompetensi Guru

Novel ring resonator-based integrated photonic beamformer for broadband phased array receive antennas - part I: design and performance analysis

A novel optical beamformer concept is introduced that can be used for seamless control of the reception angle in broadband wireless receivers employing a large phased array antenna (PAA). The core of this beamformer is an optical beamforming network (OBFN), using ring resonator-based broadband delays, and coherent optical combining. The electro-optical conversion is performed by means of single-sideband suppressed carrier modulation, employing a common laser, Mach-Zehnder modulators, and a common optical sideband filter after the OBFN. The unmodulated laser signal is then re-injected in order to perform balanced coherent optical detection, for the opto-electrical conversion. This scheme minimizes the requirements on the complexity of the OBFN, and has potential for compact realization by means of full integration on chip. The impact of the optical beamformer concept on the performance of the full receiver system is analyzed, by modeling the combination of the PAA and the beamformer as an equivalent two-port RF system. The results are illustrated by a numerical example of a PAA receiver for satellite TV reception, showing that—when properly designed—the beamformer hardly affects the sensitivity of the receiver

Channelization for Multi-Standard Software-Defined Radio Base Stations

As the number of radio standards increase and spectrum resources come under more pressure, it becomes ever less efficient to reserve bands of spectrum for exclusive use by a single radio standard. Therefore, this work focuses on channelization structures compatible with spectrum sharing among multiple wireless standards and dynamic spectrum allocation in particular. A channelizer extracts independent communication channels from a wideband signal, and is one of the most computationally expensive components in a communications receiver. This work specifically focuses on non-uniform channelizers suitable for multi-standard Software-Defined Radio (SDR) base stations in general and public mobile radio base stations in particular. A comprehensive evaluation of non-uniform channelizers (existing and developed during the course of this work) shows that parallel and recombined variants of the Generalised Discrete Fourier Transform Modulated Filter Bank (GDFT-FB) represent the best trade-off between computational load and flexibility for dynamic spectrum allocation. Nevertheless, for base station applications (with many channels) very high filter orders may be required, making the channelizers difficult to physically implement. To mitigate this problem, multi-stage filtering techniques are applied to the GDFT-FB. It is shown that these multi-stage designs can significantly reduce the filter orders and number of operations required by the GDFT-FB. An alternative approach, applying frequency response masking techniques to the GDFT-FB prototype filter design, leads to even bigger reductions in the number of coefficients, but computational load is only reduced for oversampled configurations and then not as much as for the multi-stage designs. Both techniques render the implementation of GDFT-FB based non-uniform channelizers more practical. Finally, channelization solutions for some real-world spectrum sharing use cases are developed before some final physical implementation issues are considered

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 0.1–5.0 GHz flexible SDR receiver with digitally assisted calibration in 65 nm CMOS

© 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.A 0.1–5.0 GHz flexible software-defined radio (SDR) receiver with digitally assisted calibration is presented, employing a zero-IF/low-IF reconfigurable architecture for both wideband and narrowband applications. The receiver composes of a main-path based on a current-mode mixer for low noise, a high linearity sub-path based on a voltage-mode passive mixer for out-of-band rejection, and a harmonic rejection (HR) path with vector gain calibration. A dual feedback LNA with “8” shape nested inductor structure, a cascode inverter-based TCA with miller feedback compensation, and a class-AB full differential Op-Amp with Miller feed-forward compensation and QFG technique are proposed. Digitally assisted calibration methods for HR, IIP2 and image rejection (IR) are presented to maintain high performance over PVT variations. The presented receiver is implemented in 65 nm CMOS with 5.4 mm2 core area, consuming 9.6–47.4 mA current under 1.2 V supply. The receiver main path is measured with +5 dB m/+5dBm IB-IIP3/OB-IIP3 and +61dBm IIP2. The sub-path achieves +10 dB m/+18dBm IB-IIP3/OB-IIP3 and +62dBm IIP2, as well as 10 dB RF filtering rejection at 10 MHz offset. The HR-path reaches +13 dB m/+14dBm IB-IIP3/OB-IIP3 and 62/66 dB 3rd/5th-order harmonic rejection with 30–40 dB improvement by the calibration. The measured sensitivity satisfies the requirements of DVB-H, LTE, 802.11 g, and ZigBee.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio