544 research outputs found
Characterization and modelling of software defined radio front-ends
Doutoramento em Engenharia ElectrotécnicaO presente trabalho tem por objectivo estudar a caracterização e modelação
de arquitecturas de rádio frequência para aplicações em rádios definidos por
software e rádios cognitivos. O constante aparecimento no mercado de novos
padrões e tecnologias para comunicações sem fios têm levantado algumas
limitações à implementação de transceptores rádio de banda larga. Para além
disso, o uso de sistemas reconfiguráveis e adaptáveis baseados no conceito
de rádio definido por software e rádio cognitivo assegurará a evolução para a
próxima geração de comunicações sem fios. A ideia base desta tese passa por
resolver alguns problemas em aberto e propor avanços relevantes, tirando
para isso partido das capacidades providenciadas pelos processadores digitais
de sinal de forma a melhorar o desempenho global dos sistemas propostos.
Inicialmente, serão abordadas várias estratégias para a implementação e
projecto de transceptores rádio, concentrando-se sempre na aplicabilidade
específica a sistemas de rádio definido por software e rádio cognitivo. Serão
também discutidas soluções actuais de instrumentação capaz de caracterizar
um dispositivo que opere simultaneamente nos domínios analógico e digital,
bem como, os próximos passos nesta área de caracterização e modelação.
Além disso, iremos apresentar novos formatos de modelos comportamentais
construídos especificamente para a descrição e caracterização não-linear de
receptores de amostragem passa-banda, bem como, para sistemas nãolineares
que utilizem sinais multi-portadora.
Será apresentada uma nova arquitectura suportada na avaliação estatística
dos sinais rádio que permite aumentar a gama dinâmica do receptor em
situações de multi-portadora. Da mesma forma, será apresentada uma técnica
de maximização da largura de banda de recepção baseada na utilização do
receptor de amostragem passa-banda no formato complexo.
Finalmente, importa referir que todas as arquitecturas propostas serão
acompanhadas por uma introdução teórica e simulações, sempre que possível,
sendo após isto validadas experimentalmente por protótipos laboratoriais.This work investigates the characterization and modeling of radio frequency
front-ends for software defined radio and cognitive radio applications. The
emergence of new standards and technologies in the wireless communications
market are raising several issues to the implementation of wideband
transceiver systems. Also, reconfigurable and adaptable systems based on
software defined and cognitive radio models are paving the way for the next
generation of wireless systems. In this doctoral thesis the fundamental idea is
to address the particular open issues and propose appropriate advancements
by exploring and taking profit from new capabilities of digital signal processors
in a way to improve the overall performance of the novel schemes.
Receiver and transmitter strategies for radio communications are summarized
by concentrating on the usability for software defined radio and cognitive radio
systems. Available instrumentation and next steps for analog and digital radio
frequency hardware characterization is also discussed.
Wideband behavioral model formats are proposed for nonlinear description and
characterization of bandpass sampling receivers, as well as, for multi-carrier
nonlinear systems operation. The proposed models share a great flexibility and
have the freedom to be simply expanded to other fields.
A new design for receiver dynamic range improvement in multi-carrier
scenarios is proposed, which is supported on the useful wireless signals
statistical evaluation. Additionally, receiver-side bandwidth maximization based
on higher-order bandpass sampling approaches is evaluated.
All the proposed designs and modeling strategies are accompanied by
theoretical backgrounds and simulations whenever possible, being then
experimentally validated by laboratory prototypes
Dirty RF Signal Processing for Mitigation of Receiver Front-end Non-linearity
Moderne drahtlose Kommunikationssysteme stellen hohe und teilweise
gegensätzliche Anforderungen an die Hardware der Funkmodule, wie z.B.
niedriger Energieverbrauch, große Bandbreite und hohe Linearität. Die
Gewährleistung einer ausreichenden Linearität ist, neben anderen analogen
Parametern, eine Herausforderung im praktischen Design der Funkmodule. Der
Fokus der Dissertation liegt auf breitbandigen HF-Frontends für
Software-konfigurierbare Funkmodule, die seit einigen Jahren kommerziell
verfügbar sind. Die praktischen Herausforderungen und Grenzen solcher
flexiblen Funkmodule offenbaren sich vor allem im realen Experiment. Eines
der Hauptprobleme ist die Sicherstellung einer ausreichenden analogen
Performanz über einen weiten Frequenzbereich. Aus einer Vielzahl an
analogen Störeffekten behandelt die Arbeit die Analyse und Minderung von
Nichtlinearitäten in Empfängern mit direkt-umsetzender Architektur. Im
Vordergrund stehen dabei Signalverarbeitungsstrategien zur Minderung
nichtlinear verursachter Interferenz - ein Algorithmus, der besser unter
"Dirty RF"-Techniken bekannt ist. Ein digitales Verfahren nach der
Vorwärtskopplung wird durch intensive Simulationen, Messungen und
Implementierung in realer Hardware verifiziert. Um die Lücken zwischen
Theorie und praktischer Anwendbarkeit zu schließen und das Verfahren in
reale Funkmodule zu integrieren, werden verschiedene Untersuchungen
durchgeführt. Hierzu wird ein erweitertes Verhaltensmodell entwickelt, das
die Struktur direkt-umsetzender Empfänger am besten nachbildet und damit
alle Verzerrungen im HF- und Basisband erfasst. Darüber hinaus wird die
Leistungsfähigkeit des Algorithmus unter realen Funkkanal-Bedingungen
untersucht. Zusätzlich folgt die Vorstellung einer ressourceneffizienten
Echtzeit-Implementierung des Verfahrens auf einem FPGA. Abschließend
diskutiert die Arbeit verschiedene Anwendungsfelder, darunter spektrales
Sensing, robuster GSM-Empfang und GSM-basiertes Passivradar. Es wird
gezeigt, dass nichtlineare Verzerrungen erfolgreich in der digitalen
Domäne gemindert werden können, wodurch die Bitfehlerrate gestörter
modulierter Signale sinkt und der Anteil nichtlinear verursachter
Interferenz minimiert wird. Schließlich kann durch das Verfahren die
effektive Linearität des HF-Frontends stark erhöht werden. Damit wird der
zuverlässige Betrieb eines einfachen Funkmoduls unter dem Einfluss der
Empfängernichtlinearität möglich. Aufgrund des flexiblen Designs ist der
Algorithmus für breitbandige Empfänger universal einsetzbar und ist nicht
auf Software-konfigurierbare Funkmodule beschränkt.Today's wireless communication systems place high requirements on the
radio's hardware that are largely mutually exclusive, such as low power
consumption, wide bandwidth, and high linearity. Achieving a sufficient
linearity, among other analogue characteristics, is a challenging issue in
practical transceiver design. The focus of this thesis is on wideband
receiver RF front-ends for software defined radio technology, which became
commercially available in the recent years. Practical challenges and
limitations are being revealed in real-world experiments with these radios.
One of the main problems is to ensure a sufficient RF performance of the
front-end over a wide bandwidth. The thesis covers the analysis and
mitigation of receiver non-linearity of typical direct-conversion receiver
architectures, among other RF impairments. The main focus is on DSP-based
algorithms for mitigating non-linearly induced interference, an approach
also known as "Dirty RF" signal processing techniques. The conceived
digital feedforward mitigation algorithm is verified through extensive
simulations, RF measurements, and implementation in real hardware. Various
studies are carried out that bridge the gap between theory and practical
applicability of this approach, especially with the aim of integrating that
technique into real devices. To this end, an advanced baseband behavioural
model is developed that matches to direct-conversion receiver architectures
as close as possible, and thus considers all generated distortions at RF
and baseband. In addition, the algorithm's performance is verified under
challenging fading conditions. Moreover, the thesis presents a
resource-efficient real-time implementation of the proposed solution on an
FPGA. Finally, different use cases are covered in the thesis that includes
spectrum monitoring or sensing, GSM downlink reception, and GSM-based
passive radar. It is shown that non-linear distortions can be successfully
mitigated at system level in the digital domain, thereby decreasing the bit
error rate of distorted modulated signals and reducing the amount of
non-linearly induced interference. Finally, the effective linearity of the
front-end is increased substantially. Thus, the proper operation of a
low-cost radio under presence of receiver non-linearity is possible. Due to
the flexible design, the algorithm is generally applicable for wideband
receivers and is not restricted to software defined radios
Wideband cyclostationary spectrum sensing and characterization for cognitive radios
Motivated by the spectrum scarcity problem, Cognitive Radios (CRs) have been proposed as a solution to opportunistically communicate over unused spectrum licensed to Primary users (PUs). In this context, the unlicensed Secondary users (SUs) sense the spectrum to detect the presence or absence of PUs, and use the unoccupied bands without causing interference to PUs. CRs are equipped with capabilities such as, learning, adaptability, and recongurability, and are spectrum aware. Spectrum awareness comes from spectrum sensing, and it can be performed using different techniques
Spectrum sensing algorithms and software-defined radio implementation for cognitive radio system
The scarcity of spectral resources in wireless communications, due to a fixed frequency allocation policy, is a strong limitation to the increasing demand for higher data rates. However, measurements showed that a large part of frequency channels are underutilized or almost unoccupied. The cognitive radio paradigm arises as a tempting solution to the spectral congestion problem. A cognitive radio must be able to identify transmission opportunities in unused channels and to avoid generating harmful interference with the licensed primary users. Its key enabling technology is the spectrum sensing unit, whose ultimate goal consists in providing an indication whether a primary transmission is taking place in the observed channel. Such indication is determined as the result of a binary hypothesis testing experiment wherein null hypothesis (alternate hypothesis) corresponds to the absence (presence) of the primary signal. The first parts of this thesis describes the spectrum sensing problem and presents some of the best performing detection techniques. Energy Detection and multi-antenna Eigenvalue-Based Detection algorithms are considered. Important aspects are taken into account, like the impact of noise estimation or the effect of primary user traffic. The performance of each detector is assessed in terms of false alarm probability and detection probability. In most experimental research, cognitive radio techniques are deployed in software-defined radio systems, radio transceivers that allow operating parameters (like modulation type, bandwidth, output power, etc.) to be set or altered by software.In the second part of the thesis, we introduce the software-defined radio concept. Then, we focus on the implementation of Energy Detection and Eigenvalue-Based Detection algorithms: first, the used software platform, GNU Radio, is described, secondly, the implementation of a parallel energy detector and a multi-antenna eigenbased detector is illustrated and details on the used methodologies are given. Finally, we present the deployed experimental cognitive testbeds and the used radio peripherals. The obtained algorithmic results along with the software-defined radio implementation may offer a set of tools able to create a realistic cognitive radio system with real-time spectrum sensing capabilities
Sub-Nyquist Sampling: Bridging Theory and Practice
Sampling theory encompasses all aspects related to the conversion of
continuous-time signals to discrete streams of numbers. The famous
Shannon-Nyquist theorem has become a landmark in the development of digital
signal processing. In modern applications, an increasingly number of functions
is being pushed forward to sophisticated software algorithms, leaving only
those delicate finely-tuned tasks for the circuit level.
In this paper, we review sampling strategies which target reduction of the
ADC rate below Nyquist. Our survey covers classic works from the early 50's of
the previous century through recent publications from the past several years.
The prime focus is bridging theory and practice, that is to pinpoint the
potential of sub-Nyquist strategies to emerge from the math to the hardware. In
that spirit, we integrate contemporary theoretical viewpoints, which study
signal modeling in a union of subspaces, together with a taste of practical
aspects, namely how the avant-garde modalities boil down to concrete signal
processing systems. Our hope is that this presentation style will attract the
interest of both researchers and engineers in the hope of promoting the
sub-Nyquist premise into practical applications, and encouraging further
research into this exciting new frontier.Comment: 48 pages, 18 figures, to appear in IEEE Signal Processing Magazin
Sistema para deteção de pessoas
mestrado em Engenharia Eletrónica e TelecomunicaçõesO RADAR é para fins militares já relativamente antigo que sofreu um
grande impulso durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial. Hoje em dia existe
um forte desenvolvimento no RADAR em aplicações de navegação ou vigilância/segurança.
Esta dissertação surge no seguimento destas novas aplicações, em que se
pretende o desenvolvimento de um RADAR de baixo custo que permita
ao utilizador detetar pessoas, bem como, os seus movimentos através de
paredes ou objetos opacos.
O desenvolvimento deste RADAR recaiu em tecnologias emergentes como
antenas adaptativas e rádio definido por software que permitem uma grande
versatilidade e adaptação em termos de aplicações. A utilização de um
RADAR com múltiplas entradas e múltiplas saídas fornece uma maior diversidade
de informação que garante mais probabilidades de deteção. A
aplicação de técnicas digitais de beamforming, possibilita conhecer a posição
e o movimento da pessoa.
Com a implementação destas técnicas um protótipo capaz de detetar pessoas
e os seus movimentos através de paredes e tijolos foi desenvolvido com
sucesso solucionando o problema inicial.
Na fase de projeto de RADAR houve necessidade de caracterizar a propagação de ondas de rádio em materiais de construção, como tijolos e madeira,
medindo-se a sua atenuação. Deste modo foi possível fazer o balanço
de potencia para varios canarios.The RADAR is already relatively old for military purposes that underwent
a major development during World War II. Nowadays there is a strong
development in RADAR in navigation or surveillance/security applications.
This dissertation follows on from these new applications, which aim to develop
a low cost RADAR that allows the user to detect people as well as
their movements through walls or opaque objects.
The development of this RADAR has relied on emerging technologies such
as adaptive antennas and SDR that allow for great versatility and adaptation
in terms of applications. The use of a MIMO RADAR provides a greater
diversity of information that guarantees more probabilities of detection and
the application of digital techniques of beamforming, allows to know the
position and the movement of the person.
With the implementation of these techniques a prototype capable of detecting
people and their movements through walls and bricks was successfully
developed solving the initial problem.
In the RADAR design phase it was necessary to characterize the propagation
of radio waves in building materials, such as bricks and wood, by measuring
their attenuation. In this way it was possible to perform the power balance
for several scenarios
Solutions for New Terrestrial Broadcasting Systems Offering Simultaneously Stationary and Mobile Services
221 p.[EN]Since the first broadcasted TV signal was transmitted in the early decades of
the past century, the television broadcasting industry has experienced a series of
dramatic changes. Most recently, following the evolution from analogue to digital
systems, the digital dividend has become one of the main concerns of the
broadcasting industry. In fact, there are many international spectrum authorities
reclaiming part of the broadcasting spectrum to satisfy the growing demand of
other services, such as broadband wireless services, arguing that the TV services
are not very spectrum-efficient.
Apart from that, it must be taken into account that, even if up to now the
mobile broadcasting has not been considered a major requirement, this will
probably change in the near future. In fact, it is expected that the global mobile
data traffic will increase 11-fold between 2014 and 2018, and what is more, over
two thirds of the data traffic will be video stream by the end of that period.
Therefore, the capability to receive HD services anywhere with a mobile device is
going to be a mandatory requirement for any new generation broadcasting system.
The main objective of this work is to present several technical solutions that
answer to these challenges. In particular, the main questions to be solved are the
spectrum efficiency issue and the increasing user expectations of receiving high
quality mobile services. In other words, the main objective is to provide technical
solutions for an efficient and flexible usage of the terrestrial broadcasting spectrum
for both stationary and mobile services.
The first contributions of this scientific work are closely related to the study of
the mobile broadcast reception. Firstly, a comprehensive mathematical analysis of
the OFDM signal behaviour over time-varying channels is presented. In order to
maximize the channel capacity in mobile environments, channel estimation and
equalization are studied in depth. First, the most implemented equalization
solutions in time-varying scenarios are analyzed, and then, based on these existing
techniques, a new equalization algorithm is proposed for enhancing the receivers’
performance.
An alternative solution for improving the efficiency under mobile channel
conditions is treating the Inter Carrier Interference as another noise source.
Specifically, after analyzing the ICI impact and the existing solutions for reducing
the ICI penalty, a new approach based on the robustness of FEC codes is
presented. This new approach employs one dimensional algorithms at the receiver
and entrusts the ICI removing task to the robust forward error correction codes.
Finally, another major contribution of this work is the presentation of the
Layer Division Multiplexing (LDM) as a spectrum-efficient and flexible solution
for offering stationary and mobile services simultaneously. The comprehensive
theoretical study developed here verifies the improved spectrum efficiency,
whereas the included practical validation confirms the feasibility of the system and
presents it as a very promising multiplexing technique, which will surely be a strong
candidate for the next generation broadcasting services.[ES]Desde el comienzo de la transmisión de las primeras señales de televisión a
principios del siglo pasado, la radiodifusión digital ha evolucionado gracias a una
serie de cambios relevantes. Recientemente, como consecuencia directa de la
digitalización del servicio, el dividendo digital se ha convertido en uno de los
caballos de batalla de la industria de la radiodifusión. De hecho, no son pocos los
consorcios internacionales que abogan por asignar parte del espectro de
radiodifusión a otros servicios como, por ejemplo, la telefonía móvil, argumentado
la poca eficiencia espectral de la tecnología de radiodifusión actual.
Asimismo, se debe tener en cuenta que a pesar de que los servicios móviles no
se han considerado fundamentales en el pasado, esta tendencia probablemente
variará en el futuro cercano. De hecho, se espera que el tráfico derivado de
servicios móviles se multiplique por once entre los años 2014 y 2018; y lo que es
más importante, se pronostica que dos tercios del tráfico móvil sea video streaming
para finales de ese periodo. Por lo tanto, la posibilidad de ofrecer servicios de alta
definición en dispositivos móviles es un requisito fundamental para los sistemas de
radiodifusión de nueva generación.
El principal objetivo de este trabajo es presentar soluciones técnicas que den
respuesta a los retos planteados anteriormente. En particular, las principales
cuestiones a resolver son la ineficiencia espectral y el incremento de usuarios que
demandan mayor calidad en los contenidos para dispositivos móviles. En pocas
palabras, el principal objetivo de este trabajo se basa en ofrecer una solución más
eficiente y flexible para la transmisión simultánea de servicios fijos y móviles.
La primera contribución relevante de este trabajo está relacionada con la
recepción de la señal de televisión en movimiento. En primer lugar, se presenta un
completo análisis matemático del comportamiento de la señal OFDM en canales
variantes con el tiempo. A continuación, con la intención de maximizar la
capacidad del canal, se estudian en profundidad los algoritmos de estimación y
ecualización. Posteriormente, se analizan los algoritmos de ecualización más
implementados, y por último, basándose en estas técnicas, se propone un nuevo
algoritmo de ecualización para aumentar el rendimiento de los receptores en tales
condiciones.
Del mismo modo, se plantea un nuevo enfoque para mejorar la eficiencia de
los servicios móviles basado en tratar la interferencia entre portadoras como una
fuente de ruido. Concretamente, tras analizar el impacto del ICI en los receptores
actuales, se sugiere delegar el trabajo de corrección de dichas distorsiones en
códigos FEC muy robustos.
Finalmente, la última contribución importante de este trabajo es la
presentación de la tecnología LDM como una manera más eficiente y flexible para
la transmisión simultánea de servicios fijos y móviles. El análisis teórico presentado
confirma el incremento en la eficiencia espectral, mientras que el estudio práctico
valida la posible implementación del sistema y presenta la tecnología LDM c
Towards low-cost gigabit wireless systems at 60 GHz
The world-wide availability of the huge amount of license-free spectral space in the 60 GHz band provides wide room for gigabit-per-second (Gb/s) wireless applications. A commercial (read: low-cost) 60-GHz transceiver will, however, provide limited system performance due to the stringent link budget and the substantial RF imperfections. The work presented in this thesis is intended to support the design of low-cost 60-GHz transceivers for Gb/s transmission over short distances (a few meters). Typical applications are the transfer of high-definition streaming video and high-speed download. The presented work comprises research into the characteristics of typical 60-GHz channels, the evaluation of the transmission quality as well as the development of suitable baseband algorithms. This can be summarized as follows. In the first part, the characteristics of the wave propagation at 60 GHz are charted out by means of channel measurements and ray-tracing simulations for both narrow-beam and omni-directional configurations. Both line-of-sight (LOS) and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) are considered. This study reveals that antennas that produce a narrow beam can be used to boost the received power by tens of dBs when compared with omnidirectional configurations. Meanwhile, the time-domain dispersion of the channel is reduced to the order of nanoseconds, which facilitates Gb/s data transmission over 60-GHz channels considerably. Besides the execution of measurements and simulations, the influence of antenna radiation patterns is analyzed theoretically. It is indicated to what extent the signal-to-noise ratio, Rician-K factor and channel dispersion are improved by application of narrow-beam antennas and to what extent these parameters will be influenced by beam pointing errors. From both experimental and analytical work it can be concluded that the problem of the stringent link-budget can be solved effectively by application of beam-steering techniques. The second part treats wideband transmission methods and relevant baseband algorithms. The considered schemes include orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), multi-carrier code division multiple access (MC-CDMA) and single carrier with frequency-domain equalization (SC-FDE), which are promising candidates for Gb/s wireless transmission. In particular, the optimal linear equalization in the frei quency domain and associated implementation issues such as synchronization and channel estimation are examined. Bit error rate (BER) expressions are derived to evaluate the transmission performance. Besides the linear equalization techniques, a low-complexity inter-symbol interference cancellation technique is proposed to achieve much better performance of code-spreading systems such as MC-CDMA and SC-FDE. Both theoretical analysis and simulations demonstrate that the proposed scheme offers great advantages as regards both complexity and performance. This makes it particularly suitable for 60-GHz applications in multipath environments. The third part treats the influence of quantization and RF imperfections on the considered transmission methods in the context of 60-GHz radios. First, expressions for the BER are derived and the influence of nonlinear distortions caused by the digital-to-analog converters, analog-to-digital converters and power amplifiers on the BER performance is examined. Next, the BER performance under the influence of phase noise and IQ imbalance is evaluated for the case that digital compensation techniques are applied in the receiver as well as for the case that such techniques are not applied. Finally, a baseline design of a low-cost Gb/s 60-GHz transceiver is presented. It is shown that, by application of beam-steering in combination with SC-FDE without advanced channel coding, a data rate in the order of 2 Gb/s can be achieved over a distance of 10 meters in a typical NLOS indoor scenario
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