Reduced-complexity Digital Predistortion in Flexible Radio Spectrum Access

Wireless communications is nowadays seen as one of the main foundations of technological advancements in, e.g., healthcare, education, agriculture, transportation, computing, personal communications, media, and entertainment. This requires major technological developments and advances at different levels of the wireless communication systems and networks. In particular, it is required to utilize the currently available frequency spectrum in a more and more efficient way, while also adopting new spectral bands. Moreover, it is required that cheaper and smaller electronic components are used to build future wireless communication systems to facilitate increasingly cost-effective solutions. Meanwhile, energy efficiency becomes extremely important in wide scale deployments of the networks both from a running cost point of view, and from an environmental impact point of view. This is the big picture, or the so called ‘bird’s eye view’ of the challenges that are yet to be met in this very interesting and fast developing field of science.The power amplifier (PA) is the most power-hungry component in most RF transmitters. Consequently, its energy efficiency significantly contributes to the overall energy efficiency of the transmitter, and in fact the whole wireless network. Unfortunately, energy efficiency enhancement implies operating the PA closer to its saturation region, which typically results in severe nonlinear distortion that can deteriorate the signal quality and cause interference to neighboring users, both of which negatively impact the system spectral efficiency. Moreover, in flexible spectrum access scenarios, which are essential for improving the spectral efficiency, particular in the form of non-contiguous radio spectrum access, the nonlinear distortion due to the PA becomes even more severe and can significantly impact the overall network performance. For example, in noncontiguous carrier aggregation (CA) in LTE-Advanced, it has been demonstrated that in addition to the classical in-band distortion and regrowth around the main carriers, harmful spurious emission components are generated which can easily violate the spurious emission limits even in the case of user equipment (UE) transmitters.Technological advances in the digital electronics domain have enabled us to approach this problem from a digital signal processing point of view in the form of widely-adopted and researched digital predistortion (DPD) technology. However, when the signal bandwidth gets larger, and flexible or non-contiguous spectrum access is introduced, the complexity of the DPD increases and the power consumed in the digital domain by the DPD itself becomes higher and higher, to the extent that it might be close to, or even surpass, the energy savings achieved from using a more efficient PA. The problem becomes even more challenging at the UE side which has relatively limited computational capabilities and lower transmit power. This dilemma can be resolved by developing novel reduced-complexity DPD solutions in such flexible spectrum access and/or wide bandwidth scenarios while not sacrificing the DPD performance, which is the main topic area that this thesis work contributes to.The first contribution of this thesis is the development of a spur-injection based sub-band DPD structure for spurious emission mitigation in noncontiguous transmission scenarios. A novel and effective learning algorithm is also introduced, for the proposed sub-band DPD, based on the decorrelation principle. Mathematical models of the unwanted emissions are formulated based on realistic PA models with memory, followed by developing an efficient DPD structure for mitigating these emissions with reducedcomplexity in both the DPD main processing and learning paths while providing excellent spurious emission suppression. In the special case when the spurious emissions overlap with the own RX band in frequency division duplexing (FDD) transceivers, a novel subband DPD solution is also developed that uses the main RX for DPD learning without requiring any additional observation RX, thus further reducing the DPD complexity.The second contribution is the development of a novel reduced-complexity concurrent DPD, with a single-feedback receiver path, for carrier aggregation-like scenarios. The proposed solution is based on a simple and flexible DPD structure with decorrelationbased parameter learning. Practical simulations and RF measurements demonstrate that the proposed concurrent DPD provides excellent linearization performance, in terms of in-band error vector magnitude (EVM) and adjacent channel leakage ratio (ACLR), when compared to state-of-the-art concurrent DPD solutions, despite its reduced computational complexity in both the DPD main path processing and parameter learning.The third contribution is the development of a new and novel frequency-optimized DPD solution which can tailor its linearization capabilities to any particular regions of the spectrum. Detailed mathematical expressions of the power spectrum at the PA output as a function of the DPD coefficients are formulated. A Newton-Raphson optimization routine is then utilized to optimize the suppression of unwanted emissions at arbitrary pre-specified frequencies at the PA output. From a complexity reduction perspective, this means that for a given linearization performance at a particular frequency range, an optimized and reduced-complexity DPD can be used.Detailed quantitative complexity analysis, of all the proposed DPD solutions, is performed in this thesis. The complexity and linearization performance are also compared to state-of-the-art DPD solutions in the literature to validate and demonstrate the complexity reduction aspect without sacrificing the linearization performance. Moreover, all the DPD solutions developed in this thesis are tested in practical RF environments using real cellular power amplifiers that are commercially used in the latest wireless communication systems, both at the base station side and at the mobile terminal side. These experiments, along with the strong theoretical foundation of the developed DPD solutions prove that they can be commercially used as such to enhance the performance, energy efficiency, and cost effectiveness of next generation wireless transmitters

Nopeaan konvolutioon perustuva suodatettu OFDM ja ikkunoitu OFDM aaltomuotojen suorituskykyvertailussa 5G fyysiselle kerrokselle

Nykyisten mobiiliverkkojen vaatimukset kasvavat jatkuvasti, mikä johtuu pitkälti uusien mobiililaitteiden ja -palveluiden suosion kasvusta. Lisäksi matkapuhelinverkkoja on alettu käyttämään pääasiallisena internetyhteytenä, sillä nykyteknologialla on mahdollista saavuttaa kiinteään laajakaistayhteyksiin verrattavia käyttäjäkokemuksia useimmissa sovelluksissa. Nykyiset Long Term Evolution (LTE) ja LTE-Advanced ovat neljännen sukupolven (4G) teknologioita, jotka tarjoavat jo hyvin suuria tiedonsiirtonopeuksia. Tulevaisuuden palvelut vaativat kuitenkin uusia ominaisuuksia verkolta ja tämän takia uusia teknlogioita tutkitaan jatkuvasti lisää. Viidennen sukupolven (5G) teknologia pyrkii kasvattamaan tiedonsiirtonopeuksia entisestään. Lisäksi on ennustettu, että tulevaisuuden teknologiat vaativat tukea myös pienille ja viivekriittisille lähetyksille, kuten Internet of Things (IoT) ja Machineto-Machine (M2M) -tyyppisille palveluille. Tämä tarkoittaa, että verkkoon yhdistettyjen laitteiden määrä tulee kasvamaan räjähdysmäisesti. Verkossa ovat jatkossa esimerkiksi älykkäät autot, kodinkoneet, sensorit ja monet muut älykkäät laitteet, mikä vaatii mobiiliverkoilta merkittävästi suurta kapasiteettia ja joustavuutta. Tässä diplomityössä tutkitaan kahden uuden aaltomuodon soveltuvuutta 5G aaltomuodoksi: ikkunoitu CP-OFDM ja nopeaan konvoluutioon perustuva suodatettu CP-OFDM. Referenssinä on käytetty LTE-tyylistä kanavasuodatettua CP-OFDM aaltomuotoa vertaillen alltomuotojen spektraalista tehokkuutta ja vuototehoa. Aaltomuotojen suorituskykyä vertaillaan lopuksi kokonaisen tietoliikennelinkin yli. Tulosten perusteella kanavan käyttötehokkuus kasvaa uusilla aaltomuodoilla niin laaja- kuin kapeakaistalähetyksissä, mahdollistaen suurempia tiedonsiirtonopeuksia samassa kanavassa. Parannusta on havaittavissa erityisesti kapeakaistaisten lähetysten vuototehossa. Tämä sallii taajudessa lähekkäin olevien eri alikantoaaltoväliä, eri mittaisia syklisiä etuliitteitä tai eri aikasynkronisuusvaatimuksia käyytävien signaalien lähettämisen samanaikaisesti, häiritsemättä merkittävästi muita lähetyksiä.The demands for modern wireless cellular networks are increasing constantly due to the introduction of new mobile devices and services. Additionally, mobile networks are being used as a primary Internet connection as the current wireless networks are able to achieve similar user experiences than with wired connections in most applications. Long Term Evolution (LTE) and LTE-Advanced are current 4G technologies already allowing very high peak data rates. However, additional features are needed from network to satisfy traffic demands of the future and suitable technologies are in high interest in nowadays research. The fifth generation (5G) wireless system targets to increase data transmission rates further. In addition, it has been forecast that the traffic trends of the future becomes more delay-critical and small bursts communication has a bigger role. These type of services are e.g. Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications. These increases dramatically the number of devices connected to Internet, for example smart cars, domestic appliances, sensors and other smart devices, which will require significantly improved capacity and flexibility from the forthcoming mobile communication networks. In this thesis, two waveform candidates for 5G are evaluated and compared: Windowed CP-OFDM and Fast Convolution based Filtered CP-OFDM. LTE-like channel filtered CP-OFDM is used as a reference in spectral efficiency, power leakage and overall link performance comparisons of the waveforms. It will be shown that the spectral utilization is improved with proposed waveforms in broadband and narrowband transmissions, which allows higher data rates inside the same bandwidth. The most significant improvement is observed in narrowband power leakage evaluations. Reduced power leakage allows to transmit several narrowband signals with different subcarrier spacings, cyclic prefix lengths, or different timing accuracy with tight frequency spacing without significant interference levels

Nopeaan konvolutioon perustuva suodatettu OFDM ja ikkunoitu OFDM aaltomuotojen suorituskykyvertailussa 5G fyysiselle kerrokselle

Nykyisten mobiiliverkkojen vaatimukset kasvavat jatkuvasti, mikä johtuu pitkälti uusien mobiililaitteiden ja -palveluiden suosion kasvusta. Lisäksi matkapuhelinverkkoja on alettu käyttämään pääasiallisena internetyhteytenä, sillä nykyteknologialla on mahdollista saavuttaa kiinteään laajakaistayhteyksiin verrattavia käyttäjäkokemuksia useimmissa sovelluksissa. Nykyiset Long Term Evolution (LTE) ja LTE-Advanced ovat neljännen sukupolven (4G) teknologioita, jotka tarjoavat jo hyvin suuria tiedonsiirtonopeuksia. Tulevaisuuden palvelut vaativat kuitenkin uusia ominaisuuksia verkolta ja tämän takia uusia teknlogioita tutkitaan jatkuvasti lisää. Viidennen sukupolven (5G) teknologia pyrkii kasvattamaan tiedonsiirtonopeuksia entisestään. Lisäksi on ennustettu, että tulevaisuuden teknologiat vaativat tukea myös pienille ja viivekriittisille lähetyksille, kuten Internet of Things (IoT) ja Machineto-Machine (M2M) -tyyppisille palveluille. Tämä tarkoittaa, että verkkoon yhdistettyjen laitteiden määrä tulee kasvamaan räjähdysmäisesti. Verkossa ovat jatkossa esimerkiksi älykkäät autot, kodinkoneet, sensorit ja monet muut älykkäät laitteet, mikä vaatii mobiiliverkoilta merkittävästi suurta kapasiteettia ja joustavuutta. Tässä diplomityössä tutkitaan kahden uuden aaltomuodon soveltuvuutta 5G aaltomuodoksi: ikkunoitu CP-OFDM ja nopeaan konvoluutioon perustuva suodatettu CP-OFDM. Referenssinä on käytetty LTE-tyylistä kanavasuodatettua CP-OFDM aaltomuotoa vertaillen alltomuotojen spektraalista tehokkuutta ja vuototehoa. Aaltomuotojen suorituskykyä vertaillaan lopuksi kokonaisen tietoliikennelinkin yli. Tulosten perusteella kanavan käyttötehokkuus kasvaa uusilla aaltomuodoilla niin laaja- kuin kapeakaistalähetyksissä, mahdollistaen suurempia tiedonsiirtonopeuksia samassa kanavassa. Parannusta on havaittavissa erityisesti kapeakaistaisten lähetysten vuototehossa. Tämä sallii taajudessa lähekkäin olevien eri alikantoaaltoväliä, eri mittaisia syklisiä etuliitteitä tai eri aikasynkronisuusvaatimuksia käyytävien signaalien lähettämisen samanaikaisesti, häiritsemättä merkittävästi muita lähetyksiä.The demands for modern wireless cellular networks are increasing constantly due to the introduction of new mobile devices and services. Additionally, mobile networks are being used as a primary Internet connection as the current wireless networks are able to achieve similar user experiences than with wired connections in most applications. Long Term Evolution (LTE) and LTE-Advanced are current 4G technologies already allowing very high peak data rates. However, additional features are needed from network to satisfy traffic demands of the future and suitable technologies are in high interest in nowadays research. The fifth generation (5G) wireless system targets to increase data transmission rates further. In addition, it has been forecast that the traffic trends of the future becomes more delay-critical and small bursts communication has a bigger role. These type of services are e.g. Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications. These increases dramatically the number of devices connected to Internet, for example smart cars, domestic appliances, sensors and other smart devices, which will require significantly improved capacity and flexibility from the forthcoming mobile communication networks. In this thesis, two waveform candidates for 5G are evaluated and compared: Windowed CP-OFDM and Fast Convolution based Filtered CP-OFDM. LTE-like channel filtered CP-OFDM is used as a reference in spectral efficiency, power leakage and overall link performance comparisons of the waveforms. It will be shown that the spectral utilization is improved with proposed waveforms in broadband and narrowband transmissions, which allows higher data rates inside the same bandwidth. The most significant improvement is observed in narrowband power leakage evaluations. Reduced power leakage allows to transmit several narrowband signals with different subcarrier spacings, cyclic prefix lengths, or different timing accuracy with tight frequency spacing without significant interference levels

Linearity Requirements in LTE-Advanced Mobile Transmitter

LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) is an emerging wireless communication system, which builds on the foundation of Long Term Evolution (LTE), adding many unprecedented arrangements in utilization of radio resources. Most notably LTE-A allows allocating non-contiguous resources in frequency domain, which significantly enhances the flexibility of the multiple access scheme. Contiguous and non-contiguous carrier aggregation, both intra- and inter-band, are essential components of LTE-A. However, these features set very high requirements especially for mobile transmitters, which simultaneously should be cheap, small, linear and power efficient. Linearity in particular is an important aspect because non-contiguous allocation is prone to produce severe intermodulation distortion, which will degrade transmit signal quality and cause interference to users operating on adjacent frequency ranges. Because variety of wireless systems have to coexist and interoperate in the scarce spectrum supply, there are stringent requirements for unwanted spectrum emissions. There is an inherent trade-off between linearity and power efficiency. Therefore it is significantly difficult to fulfill regulatory spectrum emission requirements with current transmitter technology without sacrificing battery life when operating near the maximum output power. As a compromise LTE-A allows relaxations to maximum output power requirement according to the used submodulation, number of used resource blocks and possible coexistence situations. In practice the transmitter power amplifier (PA) input power is reduced which linearises the PA response. However, this forces the PA to operate less efficiently. This simultaneously constrains using larger constellations and/or higher coding rates because of degraded link budget. Therefore maximum power reduction (MPR) should be minimized. In this thesis LTE and LTE-A are introduced and the models and effects of transmitter nonlinearity are discussed. Linearity requirements of mobile LTE-A transmitter are evaluated using both simulations and measurements in different transmission scenarios, including LTE and LTE-A releases from 8 to 12. The results of the analysis can be used in development of intelligent radio resource management algorithms, advanced MPR specifications and digital predistortion systems

Nonlinear Characterization and Modeling of Radio-Frequency Devices and Power Amplifiers with Memory Effects

Despite the fast development of telecommunications systems experienced during the last two decades, much progress is expected in the coming years with the introduction of new solutions capable of delivering fast data-rates and ubiquitous connectivity. However, this development can only happen through the evolution of radio-frequency systems, which should be capable of working at high-power and high-speed. At the same time, the power dissipation of these systems should be minimized. In this dissertation, methods for the characterization and modeling of transistors and power amplifiers are presented, along with the necessary nonlinear measurements techniques. In particular, dynamic electrical effects, originated by the properties of the semiconductor materials and by the system configurations, are investigated. Consequently, these phenomena, which cannot be ignored to obtain the wanted performance, are empirically identified and included in models for Gallium Nitride (GaN) transistors and power amplifiers driven by a dynamic voltage supply

Modeling and Digital Mitigation of Transmitter Imperfections in Radio Communication Systems

To satisfy the continuously growing demands for higher data rates, modern radio communication systems employ larger bandwidths and more complex waveforms. Furthermore, radio devices are expected to support a rich mixture of standards such as cellular networks, wireless local-area networks, wireless personal area networks, positioning and navigation systems, etc. In general, a "smart'' device should be flexible to support all these requirements while being portable, cheap, and energy efficient. These seemingly conflicting expectations impose stringent radio frequency (RF) design challenges which, in turn, call for their proper understanding as well as developing cost-effective solutions to address them. The direct-conversion transceiver architecture is an appealing analog front-end for flexible and multi-standard radio systems. However, it is sensitive to various circuit impairments, and modern communication systems based on multi-carrier waveforms such as Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) and Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) are particularly vulnerable to RF front-end non-idealities.This thesis addresses the modeling and digital mitigation of selected transmitter (TX) RF impairments in radio communication devices. The contributions can be divided into two areas. First, new modeling and digital mitigation techniques are proposed for two essential front-end impairments in direct-conversion architecture-based OFDM and OFDMA systems, namely inphase and quadrature phase (I/Q) imbalance and carrier frequency offset (CFO). Both joint and de-coupled estimation and compensation schemes for frequency-selective TX I/Q imbalance and channel distortions are proposed for OFDM systems, to be adopted on the receiver side. Then, in the context of uplink OFDMA and Single Carrier FDMA (SC-FDMA), which are the air interface technologies of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Long Term Evolution (LTE) and LTE-Advanced systems, joint estimation and equalization techniques of RF impairments and channel distortions are proposed. Here, the challenging multi-user uplink scenario with unequal received power levels is investigated where I/Q imbalance causes inter-user interference. A joint mirror subcarrier processing-based minimum mean-square error (MMSE) equalizer with an arbitrary number of receiver antennas is formulated to effectively handle the mirror sub-band users of different power levels. Furthermore, the joint channel and impairments filter responses are efficiently approximated with polynomial-based basis function models, and the parameters of basis functions are estimated with the reference signals conforming to the LTE uplink sub-frame structure. The resulting receiver concept adopting the proposed techniques enables improved link performance without modifying the design of RF transceivers.Second, digital baseband mitigation solutions are developed for the TX leakage signal-induced self-interference in frequency division duplex (FDD) transceivers. In FDD transceivers, a duplexer is used to connect the TX and receiver (RX) chains to a common antenna while also providing isolation to the receiver chain against the powerful transmit signal. In general, the continuous miniaturization of hardware and adoption of larger bandwidths through carrier aggregation type noncontiguous allocations complicates achieving sufficient TX-RX isolation. Here, two different effects of the transmitter leakage signal are investigated. The first is TX out-of-band (OOB) emissions and TX spurious emissions at own receiver band, due to the transmitter nonlinearity, and the second is nonlinearity of down-converter in the RX that generates second-order intermodulation distortion (IMD2) due to the TX in-band leakage signal. This work shows that the transmitter leakage signal-induced interference depends on an equivalent leakage channel that models the TX path non-idealities, duplexer filter responses, and the RX path non-idealities. The work proposes algorithms that operate in the digital baseband of the transceiver to estimate the TX-RX non-idealities and the duplexer filter responses, and subsequently regenerating and canceling the self-interference, thereby potentially relaxing the TX-RX isolation requirements as well as increasing the transceiver flexibility.Overall, this thesis provides useful signal models to understand the implications of different RF non-idealities and proposes compensation solutions to cope with certain RF impairments. This is complemented with extensive computer simulations and practical RF measurements to validate their application in real-world radio transceivers

D13.1 Fundamental issues on energy- and bandwidth-efficient communications and networking

Deliverable D13.1 del projecte europeu NEWCOM#The report presents the current status in the research area of energy- and bandwidth-efficient communications and networking and highlights the fundamental issues still open for further investigation. Furthermore, the report presents the Joint Research Activities (JRAs) which will be performed within WP1.3. For each activity there is the description, the identification of the adherence with the identified fundamental open issues, a presentation of the initial results, and a roadmap for the planned joint research work in each topic.Preprin

Cross-layer energy efficiency of plc systems for smart grid applications

Though opinions are still divided over the specific choices of technology for smart grid, there is a consensus that heterogeneous communications network is most appropriate. Power line communication (PLC) is promising because it is readily available and it aligns with the natural topology of power distribution network. One of the emerging realities is that the communication system enabling smart grid must be energy-efficient. This thesis employs a cross-layer approach to address energy efficiency of PLC networks in different smart grid scenarios. At network layer, this work exploits the topology of a PLC-enabled advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) to improve the probability of successful packet delivery across the network. The technique, termed AMI clustering, leverages the traditional structure of the low voltage (LV) network by organising the smart meters into clusters and locally aggregating their readings. Improvement in packet delivery inherently reduces energy wastage. Next, the adaptation layer exploits the low data rate transmission techniques to reduce the energy requirements of PLC nodes. To achieve that, this work developed a network model in NS-3 (an open-source network simulator) that considers PLC transceivers as resource-constrained devices and interconnects them to emulate home energy management system (HEMS). The model was validated with experimental results which showed that in the home area network (HAN), low-rate applications such as energy management can be supported over low-power PLC networks. Furthermore, at physical layer, this thesis proposes a more energy-efficient multi-carrier modulation scheme than the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) used in most of the current PLC systems. OFDM is widely known for its high peak-to-average-power ratio (PAPR) which degrades energy efficiency of the systems. This thesis found that by employing vector- OFDM (V-OFDM), power requirements of PLC transmitter can be reduced. The results also showed the energy efficiency can be further improved by using a dynamic noise cancellation technique such as dynamic peak-based threshold estimation (DPTE) at the receiver. By applying the proposed methods, packet delivery can be improved by 3% at network layer (which conserves energy) and reduced data rate can save about 2.6014 dB in transmit power. Finally, at physical layer, V-OFDM and DPTE can respectively provide 5.8 dB and 2.1 dB reduction in power requirements of the PLC transceivers. These signify that if V-OFDM is combined with DPTE, future PLC modems could benefit from energy-efficient power amplifiers at reduced cost