Wideband CMOS Data Converters for Linear and Efficient mmWave Transmitters

With continuously increasing demands for wireless connectivity, higher\ua0carrier frequencies and wider bandwidths are explored. To overcome a limited transmit power at these higher carrier frequencies, multiple\ua0input multiple output (MIMO) systems, with a large number of transmitters\ua0and antennas, are used to direct the transmitted power towards\ua0the user. With a large transmitter count, each individual transmitter\ua0needs to be small and allow for tight integration with digital circuits. In\ua0addition, modern communication standards require linear transmitters,\ua0making linearity an important factor in the transmitter design.In this thesis, radio frequency digital-to-analog converter (RF-DAC)-based transmitters are explored. They shift the transition from digital\ua0to analog closer to the antennas, performing both digital-to-analog\ua0conversion and up-conversion in a single block. To reduce the need for\ua0computationally costly digital predistortion (DPD), a linear and wellbehaved\ua0RF-DAC transfer characteristic is desirable. The combination\ua0of non-overlapping local oscillator (LO) signals and an expanding segmented\ua0non-linear RF-DAC scaling is evaluated as a way to linearize\ua0the transmitter. This linearization concept has been studied both for\ua0the linearization of the RF-DAC itself and for the joint linearization of\ua0the cascaded RF-DAC-based modulator and power amplifier (PA) combination.\ua0To adapt the linearization, observation receivers are needed.\ua0In these, high-speed analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) have a central\ua0role. A high-speed ADC has been designed and evaluated to understand\ua0how concepts used to increase the sample rate affect the dynamic performance

An additive noise modeling technique for accurate statistical study of residual RF hardware impairments

Hardware impairments are the inevitable limiting factors in radio frequency communication systems, and in particular in mm-wave, the impairments can severely affect system performance. In this paper, we propose an additive noise modeling technique for modeling and analyzing the residual hardware impairments, more accurately than previously done in the literature. We analyze the effects of joint residual phase noise and IQI in both transmitter and receiver by using additive noise modeling as a representation method and indicate how other impairments can be described in the same framework. We derive the signal to distortion plus noise ratio (SDNR) for both the joint and the individual effects of impairments and validate the formulations with simulations which also acknowledge the usefulness of the additive noise modeling as a mean for accurate hardware impairments study

Communication Subsystems for Emerging Wireless Technologies

The paper describes a multi-disciplinary design of modern communication systems. The design starts with the analysis of a system in order to define requirements on its individual components. The design exploits proper models of communication channels to adapt the systems to expected transmission conditions. Input filtering of signals both in the frequency domain and in the spatial domain is ensured by a properly designed antenna. Further signal processing (amplification and further filtering) is done by electronics circuits. Finally, signal processing techniques are applied to yield information about current properties of frequency spectrum and to distribute the transmission over free subcarrier channels

Local Oscillator Phase Noise Impact on M-ary Modulation Schemes

This paper presents the impact of a local oscillator phase noise on digital modulation schemes based on bit error rate and error vector magnitude. The adopted methodology enables base band metrics estimation which is dependent of a specific communication standard. A generic local oscillator phase noise model is presented to evaluate the impact of different phase noise values on error vector magnitude and bit error rate. For a phase noise of -65dBc @ 1kHz the error vector magnitude changes from 7% to 12.8%. Increasing the modulation order leads to bit error rate increment for the same phase noise value.publishersversionpublishe

High Performance Local Oscillator Design for Next Generation Wireless Communication

Local Oscillator (LO) is an essential building block in modern wireless radios. In modern wireless radios, LO often serves as a reference of the carrier signal to modulate or demod- ulate the outgoing or incoming data. The LO signal should be a clean and stable source, such that the frequency or timing information of the carrier reference can be well-defined. However, as radio architecture evolves, the importance of LO path design has become much more important than before. Of late, many radio architecture innovations have exploited sophisticated LO generation schemes to meet the ever-increasing demands of wireless radio performances. The focus of this thesis is to address challenges in the LO path design for next-generation high performance wireless radios. These challenges include (1) Congested spectrum at low radio frequency (RF) below 5GHz (2) Continuing miniaturization of integrated wireless radio, and (3) Fiber-fast (>10Gb/s) mm-wave wireless communication. The thesis begins with a brief introduction of the aforementioned challenges followed by a discussion of the opportunities projected to overcome these challenges. To address the challenge of congested spectrum at frequency below 5GHz, novel ra- dio architectures such as cognitive radio, software-defined radio, and full-duplex radio have drawn significant research interest. Cognitive radio is a radio architecture that opportunisti- cally utilize the unused spectrum in an environment to maximize spectrum usage efficiency. Energy-efficient spectrum sensing is the key to implementing cognitive radio. To enable energy-efficient spectrum sensing, a fast-hopping frequency synthesizer is an essential build- ing block to swiftly sweep the carrier frequency of the radio across the available spectrum. Chapter 2 of this thesis further highlights the challenges and trade-offs of the current LO gen- eration scheme for possible use in sweeping LO-based spectrum analysis. It follows by intro- duction of the proposed fast-hopping LO architecture, its implementation and measurement results of the validated prototype. Chapter 3 proposes an embedded phase-shifting LO-path design for wideband RF self-interference cancellation for full-duplex radio. It demonstrates a synergistic design between the LO path and signal to perform self-interference cancellation. To address the challenge of continuing miniaturization of integrated wireless radio, ring oscillator-based frequency synthesizer is an attractive candidate due to its compactness. Chapter 4 discussed the difficulty associated with implementing a Phase-Locked Loop (PLL) with ultra-small form-factor. It further proposes the concept sub-sampling PLL with time- based loop filter to address these challenges. A 65nm CMOS prototype and its measurement result are presented for validation of the concept. In shifting from RF to mm-wave frequencies, the performance of wireless communication links is boosted by significant bandwidth and data-rate expansion. However, the demand for data-rate improvement is out-pacing the innovation of radio architectures. A >10Gb/s mm-wave wireless communication at 60GHz is required by emerging applications such as virtual-reality (VR) headsets, inter-rack data transmission at data center, and Ultra-High- Definition (UHD) TV home entertainment systems. Channel-bonding is considered to be a promising technique for achieving >10Gb/s wireless communication at 60GHz. Chapter 5 discusses the fundamental radio implementation challenges associated with channel-bonding for 60GHz wireless communication and the pros and cons of prior arts that attempted to address these challenges. It is followed by a discussion of the proposed 60GHz channel- bonding receiver, which utilizes only a single PLL and enables both contiguous and non- contiguous channel-bonding schemes. Finally, Chapter 6 presents the conclusion of this thesis

OFDM under Oscillator Phase Noise : Contributions to Analysis and Estimation Methods

Most modern transmitters and receivers involve an analog front-end unit and a digital back-end unit. The digital back-end is responsible for information processing which involves thefollowing: redundancy removal from information; information representation; improvinginformation resilience; and information correction. The analog front-end is responsible forinformation transmission and reception. The information processing algorithms developedand implemented in the digital back-end assume a linear and noiseless analog front-end which,in reality, is not the case. This renders some of the information processing algorithms to be lesseffective in practice. The focus of this thesis is on orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing(OFDM) systems under the influence of oscillator phase noise. OFDM is an efficientinformation representation technique used in many communication systems. On the otherhand, phase noise is one type of undesired noise that occurs in the oscillator device used in theanalog front-end. It arises due to the imperfect task of frequency conversion, performed by theoscillator device, between baseband and radio frequency.  This thesis contributes to the areas of analysis and estimation in OFDM systems under theinfluence of oscillator phase noise. With regard to analysis, this thesis contributes by derivingthe channel capacity assuming a Gaussian input alphabet. The aim here is to show bothquantitatively and qualitatively the degradation in performance of the OFDM system in thepresence of phase noise. The analysis is conducted for phase noise processes that occur in bothfree-running and phase-locked loop based oscillators and also extended to include the effect ofcarrier frequency offset. With regard to estimation, two new phase noise estimation algorithmsare proposed in this thesis. In particular, these algorithms restrict the search space to a specific subset, where the desired phase noise parameter of interest is shown to lie. For example, in the first estimation method, possible subspaces in which the desired phase noise spectral vector may lie are used in the estimation step. In the second method, the geometry of the desired phase noise spectral vector is used in the estimation step. Specifically, this geometry corresponds to a non-convex set described by a set of quadratic forms that involve permutation matrices. By restricting the search space to this set, the accuracy of phase noise estimation can be improved

Digitally-Compensated Wideband 60 GHz Test-Bed for Power Amplifier Predistortion Experiments

Millimeter waves will play an important role in communication systems in the near future. On the one hand, the bandwidths available at millimeter-wave frequencies allow for elevated data rates, but on the other hand, the wide bandwidth accentuates the effects of wireless front-end impairments on transmitted waveforms and makes their compensation more difficult. Research into front-end impairment compensation in millimeter-wave frequency bands is currently being carried out, mainly using expensive laboratory setups consisting of universal signal generators, spectral analyzers and high-speed oscilloscopes. This paper presents a detailed description of an in-house built MATLAB-controlled 60 GHz measurement test-bed developed using relatively inexpensive hardware components that are available on the market and equipped with digital compensation for the most critical front-end impairments, including the digital predistortion of the power amplifier. It also demonstrates the potential of digital predistortion linearization on two distinct 60 GHz power amplifiers: one integrated in a direct-conversion transceiver and an external one with 24 dBm output power

Performance analysis of OFDM with Wiener phase noise and frequency selective fading channel

This thesis studies the effect of Wiener phase noise on the performance of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. The main performance metrics used in the analysis are capacity and signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR). OFDM is a multi-carrier modulation technique in which data is transmitted in parallel streams using closely spaced (in frequency) orthogonal carriers. Phase noise is the random fluctuation in the phase of the oscillator signal used in the frequency translation between baseband and radio frequency. These fluctuations occur because of the inherent imperfections in the components that make up the oscillator. With respect to OFDM, phase noise destroys the orthogonality between the carriers and this causes interference between the parallel streams of data which results in degradation of the capacity and SINR. We derive closed-form analytical expressions of average capacity and average SINR and highlight the key parameters of the phase noise process and OFDM system that affect its behaviour. In comparison with previous works, a probability density function (PDF) based approach is used in arriving at these performance metrics. This approach necessitates the derivation of the PDF of a sum of gamma random variables. In earlier literature, this result is available for gamma variables that have a full-rank square-root normalized covariance matrix. We generalize the result for the rank-deficient case and apply this result to obtain the statistical expressions of capacity and SINR