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

Exploration of Generator Noise Cancelling Using Least Mean Square Algorithm

Generator noise can be categorized as monotonous noise, which is very annoying and needs to be eliminated. However, noise-cancelling is not easy to do because the algorithm used is not necessarily suitable for each noise. In this study, generator noise was obtained by recording near the generator (outdoor signal) and from the room (indoor signal). Noise generator exploration is carried out to determine whether the noise signal can be removed using the Adaptive LMS method. Exploration was carried out by analyzing statistical signals, spectrum with Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) and Inverse FFT (IFFT), and analyzing the frequency distribution of the remaining noise. The results showed that the correlation coefficients were close to each other. Outdoor and indoor signals are at low frequency. The behavior of FFT and IFFT if described in two dimensions, namely real and imaginary axes, formed a circle with a zero center and has parts that come out of the circle. It confirms that noise-cancelling with adaptive LMS can be realized well even though some noise is still left. The residual noise has formed an impulse that showed normally distributed with mean=-0.0000735 and standard deviation =0.000735. This indicates that the residual noise was no longer disturbing

Adaptive Nonlinear RF Cancellation for Improved Isolation in Simultaneous Transmit-Receive Systems

This paper proposes an active radio frequency (RF) cancellation solution to suppress the transmitter (TX) passband leakage signal in radio transceivers supporting simultaneous transmission and reception. The proposed technique is based on creating an opposite-phase baseband equivalent replica of the TX leakage signal in the transceiver digital front-end through adaptive nonlinear filtering of the known transmit data, to facilitate highly accurate cancellation under a nonlinear TX power amplifier (PA). The active RF cancellation is then accomplished by employing an auxiliary transmitter chain, to generate the actual RF cancellation signal, and combining it with the received signal at the receiver (RX) low noise amplifier (LNA) input. A closed-loop parameter learning approach, based on the decorrelation principle, is also developed to efficiently estimate the coefficients of the nonlinear cancellation filter in the presence of a nonlinear TX PA with memory, finite passive isolation, and a nonlinear RX LNA. The performance of the proposed cancellation technique is evaluated through comprehensive RF measurements adopting commercial LTE-Advanced transceiver hardware components. The results show that the proposed technique can provide an additional suppression of up to 54 dB for the TX passband leakage signal at the RX LNA input, even at considerably high transmit power levels and with wide transmission bandwidths. Such novel cancellation solution can therefore substantially improve the TX-RX isolation, hence reducing the requirements on passive isolation and RF component linearity, as well as increasing the efficiency and flexibility of the RF spectrum use in the emerging 5G radio networks.Comment: accepted to IEE

Adaptive cancelation of self-generated sensory signals in a whisking robot

Sensory signals are often caused by one's own active movements. This raises a problem of discriminating between self-generated sensory signals and signals generated by the external world. Such discrimination is of general importance for robotic systems, where operational robustness is dependent on the correct interpretation of sensory signals. Here, we investigate this problem in the context of a whiskered robot. The whisker sensory signal comprises two components: one due to contact with an object (externally generated) and another due to active movement of the whisker (self-generated). We propose a solution to this discrimination problem based on adaptive noise cancelation, where the robot learns to predict the sensory consequences of its own movements using an adaptive filter. The filter inputs (copy of motor commands) are transformed by Laguerre functions instead of the often-used tapped-delay line, which reduces model order and, therefore, computational complexity. Results from a contact-detection task demonstrate that false positives are significantly reduced using the proposed scheme

Key technologies of active power filter for aircraft: a review

Active Power Filter (APF) is not only an advanced technology to improve power quality and purify power system pollution but also a good approach to solve electrical problems of an advanced aircraft such as harmonic, reactive power and unbalanced load. However, there are still some specific problems for the application of aeronautic APF in practice. Based on current research on aeronautic APF, this paper reviews three key technologies where APF can be used in aircraft AC power supply system, including the acquisition method of reference current, the strategy of APF current control and the main circuit topology.  Consecutively, the features of current aeronautic APF research are summarized, and the future research directions are also suggested

Equalization of Third-Order Intermodulation Products in Wideband Direct Conversion Receivers

This paper reports a SAW-less direct-conversion receiver which utilizes a mixed-signal feedforward path to regenerate and adaptively cancel IM3 products, thus accomplishing system-level linearization. The receiver system performance is dominated by a custom integrated RF front end implemented in 130-nm CMOS and achieves an uncorrected out-of-band IIP3 of -7.1 dBm under the worst-case UMTS FDD Region 1 blocking specifications. Under IM3 equalization, the receiver achieves an effective IIP3 of +5.3 dBm and meets the UMTS BER sensitivity requirement with 3.7 dB of margin

Analysis and Evaluation of the Family of Sign Adaptive Algorithms

In this thesis, four novel sign adaptive algorithms proposed by the author were analyzed and evaluated for floating-point arithmetic operations. These four algorithms include Sign Regressor Least Mean Fourth (SRLMF), Sign Regressor Least Mean Mixed-Norm (SRLMMN), Normalized Sign Regressor Least Mean Fourth (NSRLMF), and Normalized Sign Regressor Least Mean Mixed-Norm (NSRLMMN). The performance of the latter three algorithms has been analyzed and evaluated for real-valued data only. While the performance of the SRLMF algorithm has been analyzed and evaluated for both cases of real- and complex-valued data. Additionally, four sign adaptive algorithms proposed by other researchers were also analyzed and evaluated for floating-point arithmetic operations. These four algorithms include Sign Regressor Least Mean Square (SRLMS), Sign-Sign Least Mean Square (SSLMS), Normalized Sign-Error Least Mean Square (NSLMS), and Normalized Sign Regressor Least Mean Square (NSRLMS). The performance of the latter three algorithms has been analyzed and evaluated for both cases of real- and complex-valued data. While the performance of the SRLMS algorithm has been analyzed and evaluated for complex-valued data only. The framework employed in this thesis relies on energy conservation approach. The energy conservation framework has been applied uniformly for the evaluation of the performance of the aforementioned eight sign adaptive algorithms proposed by the author and other researchers. In other words, the energy conservation framework stands out as a common theme that runs throughout the treatment of the performance of the aforementioned eight algorithms. Some of the results from the performance evaluation of the four novel sign adaptive algorithms proposed by the author, namely SRLMF, SRLMMN, NSRLMF, and NSRLMMN are as follows. It was shown that the convergence performance of the SRLMF and SRLMMN algorithms for real-valued data was similar to those of the Least Mean Fourth (LMF) and Least Mean Mixed-Norm (LMMN) algorithms, respectively. Moreover, it was also shown that the NSRLMF and NSRLMMN algorithms exhibit a compromised convergence performance for realvalued data as compared to the Normalized Least Mean Fourth (NLMF) and Normalized Least Mean Mixed-Norm (NLMMN) algorithms, respectively. Some misconceptions among biomedical signal processing researchers concerning the implementation of adaptive noise cancelers using the Sign-Error Least Mean Fourth (SLMF), Sign-Sign Least Mean Fourth (SSLMF), and their variant algorithms were also removed. Finally, three of the novel sign adaptive algorithms proposed by the author, namely SRLMF, SRLMMN, and NSRLMF have been successfully employed by other researchers and the author in applications ranging from power quality improvement in the distribution system and multiple artifacts removal from various physiological signals such as ElectroCardioGram (ECG) and ElectroEncephaloGram (EEG)