Time-Interleaved Analog-to-Digital-Converters: Modeling, Blind Identification and Digital Correction of Frequency Response Mismatches

Analog-to-digital-conversion enables utilization of digital signal processing (DSP) in many applications today such as wireless communication, radar and electronic warfare. DSP is the favored choice for processing information over analog signal processing (ASP) because it can typically offer more flexibility, computational power, reproducibility, speed and accuracy when processing and extracting information. Software defined radio (SDR) receiver is one clear example of this, where radio frequency waveforms are converted into digital form as close to the antenna as possible and all the processing of the information contained in the received signal is extracted in a configurable manner using DSP. In order to achieve such goals, the information collected from the real world signals, which are commonly analog in their nature, must be converted into digital form before it can be processed using DSP in the respective systems. The common trend in these systems is to not only process ever larger bandwidths of data but also to process data in digital format at ever higher processing speeds with sufficient conversion accuracy. So the analog-to-digital-converter (ADC), which converts real world analog waveforms into digital form, is one of the most important cornerstones in these systems.The ADC must perform data conversion at higher and higher rates and digitize ever-increasing bandwidths of data. In accordance with the Nyquist-Shannon theorem, the conversion rate of the ADC must be suffcient to accomodate the BW of the signal to be digitized, in order to avoid aliasing. The conversion rate of the ADC can in general be increased by using parallel ADCs with each ADC performing the sampling at mutually different points in time. Interleaving the outputs of each of the individual ADCs provides then a higher digitization output rate. Such ADCs are referred to as TI-ADC. However, the mismatches between the ADCs cause unwanted spurious artifacts in the TI-ADC’s spectrum, ultimately leading to a loss in accuracy in the TI-ADC compared to the individual ADCs. Therefore, the removal or correction of these unwanted spurious artifacts is essential in having a high performance TI-ADC system.In order to remove the unwanted interleaving artifacts, a model that describes the behavior of the spurious distortion products is of the utmost importance as it can then facilitate the development of efficient digital post-processing schemes. One major contribution of this thesis consists of the novel and comprehensive modeling of the spurious interleaving mismatches in different TI-ADC scenarios. This novel and comprehensive modeling is then utilized in developing digital estimation and correction methods to remove the mismatch induced spurious artifacts in the TI-ADC’s spectrum and recovering its lost accuracy. Novel and first of its kind digital estimation and correction methods are developed and tested to suppress the frequency dependent mismatch spurs found in the TI-ADCs. The developed methods, in terms of the estimation of the unknown mismatches, build on statistical I/Q signal processing principles, applicable without specifically tailored calibration signals or waveforms. Techniques to increase the analog BW of the ADC are also analyzed and novel solutions are presented. The interesting combination of utilizing I/Q downconversion in conjunction with TI-ADC is examined, which not only extends the TI-ADC’s analog BW but also provides flexibility in accessing the radio spectrum. Unwanted spurious components created during the ADC’s bandwidth extension process are also analyzed and digital correction methods are developed to remove these spurs from the spectrum. The developed correction techniques for the removal of the undesired interleaving mismatch artifacts are validated and tested using various HW platforms, with up to 1 GHz instantaneous bandwidth. Comprehensive test scenarios are created using measurement data obtained from HW platforms, which are used to test and evaluate the performance of the developed interleaving mismatch estimation and correction schemes, evidencing excellent performance in all studied scenarios. The findings and results presented in this thesis contribute towards increasing the analog BW and conversion rate of ADC systems without losing conversion accuracy. Overall, these developments pave the way towards fulfilling the ever growing demands on the ADCs in terms of higher conversion BW, accuracy and speed

Etude et conception d'algorithmes de correction d'erreurs dans des structures de conversion analogique-numérique entrelacées pour applications radar et guerre électronique

The evolution of radar and electronic warfare systems tends to develop digitalreceivers with wider bandwidths. This constraint reaches the Analog to Digital Converters(ADC) which must provide a sample rate higher and higher while maintaining a reducedpower dissipation. A solution to meet this demand is the Time-Interleaved ADC (TIADC)which parallelizes M ADCs, increasing the sampling frequency of an M factor while still ina proportionate relation to the power loss. However, the dynamic performance of TIADCsare reduced by errors related to the mismatches between the sampling channels, due to themanufacturing processes, the supply voltage and the temperature variations. These errors canbe modeled as the result of offset, gain and clock-skew mismatches and globally as from thefrequency response mismatches. It is these last mismatches, unless addressed in the literaturethat carry our work. The objective is to study these errors to derive a model and an estimationmethod then, to propose digital compensation methods that can be implemented on a FPGAtarget.First, we propose a general TIADC model using frequency response mismatches for any Mchannel number. Our model merge a continuous-time description of mismatches and a discretetimeone of the interleaving process, resulting in an expression of the TIADC errors as a linearperiodic time-varying (LPTV) system applied to the uniformly sampled analog signal. Then,we propose a method to estimate TIADC errors based on the correlation properties of theoutput signal for any M channel. Next, we define a frequency response mismatch compensationarchitecture for TIADC errors and we study its performance related to its configuration and theinput signal. We describe an FPGA implementation of this architecture for M=4 interleavedchannels and we study the resources consumption to propose optimisations. Finally, we proposea second compensation method, specific to M=2 interleaved channels and derived from the firstone, but working on the analytical signal from the TIADC output and we compare it to a similarstate-of-the-art method.L’ évolution des systèmes radar et de guerre électronique tend à concevoir desrécepteurs numériques possédant des bandes instantanées de plus en plus larges. Cette contraintese reporte sur les Convertisseurs Analogique-Numérique (CAN) qui doivent fournir une fréquenced’échantillonnage de plus en plus élevée tout en conservant une puissance dissipée réduite. Unesolution pour répondre à cette demande est le CAN à Temps Entrelacés (ET-CAN) qui paralléliseM CANs pour augmenter la fréquence d’échantillonnage d’un facteur M tout en restant dansun rapport proportionné avec la puissance dissipée. Cependant, les performances dynamiquesdes ET-CANs sont réduites par des défauts d’entrelacements liés à des différences de processusde fabrication, de leur tension d’alimentation et des variations de température. Ces défautspeuvent être modélisés comme issus des disparités d’offsets, de gains ou décalages temporels etglobalement comme issus des disparités de réponses fréquentielles. Ce sont sur ces dernièresdisparités, moins traitées dans la littérature, que portent nos travaux. L’objectif est d’étudierces disparités pour en déduire un modèle et une méthode d’estimation puis, de proposer desméthodes de compensation numérique qui peuvent être implémentées sur une cible FPGA.Pour cela, nous proposons un modèle général des disparités de réponses fréquentielles desET-CANs pour un nombre de voies M quelconques. Celui-ci mélange une description continuedes disparités et une description discrète de l’entrelacement, résultant sur une expression desdéfauts des ET-CANs comme un filtrage à temps variant périodique (LPTV) du signal analogiqueéchantillonné uniformément. Puis, nous proposons une méthode d’estimation des disparitésdes ET-CANs basée sur les propriétés de corrélation du signal en sortie du modèle, pour Mvoies quelconques. Ensuite, nous définissions une architecture de compensation des disparitésde réponses fréquentielles des ET-CANs et nous étudions ses performances en fonction de sesconfigurations et du signal en entrée. Nous décrivons une implémentation de cette architecturepour M=4 voies entrelacées sur cible FPGA et nous étudions les ressources consommées afin deproposer des pistes d’optimisation. Enfin, nous proposons une seconde méthode de compensationspécifique au cas M=2 voies entrelacées, dérivée de la première mais travaillant sur le signalanalytique en sortie d’un ET-CAN et nous la comparons à une méthode similaire de l’état del’art