Radio-Communications Architectures

Wireless communications, i.e. radio-communications, are widely used for our different daily needs. Examples are numerous and standard names like BLUETOOTH, WiFI, WiMAX, UMTS, GSM and, more recently, LTE are well-known [Baudoin et al. 2007]. General applications in the RFID or UWB contexts are the subject of many papers. This chapter presents radio-frequency (RF) communication systems architecture for mobile, wireless local area networks (WLAN) and connectivity terminals. An important aspect of today's applications is the data rate increase, especially in connectivity standards like WiFI and WiMAX, because the user demands high Quality of Service (QoS). To increase the data rate we tend to use wideband or multi-standard architecture. The concept of software radio includes a self-reconfigurable radio link and is described here on its RF aspects. The term multi-radio is preferred. This chapter focuses on the transmitter, yet some considerations about the receiver are given. An important aspect of the architecture is that a transceiver is built with respect to the radio-communications signals. We classify them in section 2 by differentiating Continuous Wave (CW) and Impulse Radio (IR) systems. Section 3 is the technical background one has to consider for actual applications. Section 4 summarizes state-of-the-art high data rate architectures and the latest research in multi-radio systems. In section 5, IR architectures for Ultra Wide Band (UWB) systems complete this overview; we will also underline the coexistence and compatibility challenges between CW and IR systems

Baseband analog front-end and digital back-end for reconfigurable multi-standard terminals

Multimedia applications are driving wireless network operators to add high-speed data services such as Edge (E-GPRS), WCDMA (UMTS) and WLAN (IEEE 802.11a,b,g) to the existing GSM network. This creates the need for multi-mode cellular handsets that support a wide range of communication standards, each with a different RF frequency, signal bandwidth, modulation scheme etc. This in turn generates several design challenges for the analog and digital building blocks of the physical layer. In addition to the above-mentioned protocols, mobile devices often include Bluetooth, GPS, FM-radio and TV services that can work concurrently with data and voice communication. Multi-mode, multi-band, and multi-standard mobile terminals must satisfy all these different requirements. Sharing and/or switching transceiver building blocks in these handsets is mandatory in order to extend battery life and/or reduce cost. Only adaptive circuits that are able to reconfigure themselves within the handover time can meet the design requirements of a single receiver or transmitter covering all the different standards while ensuring seamless inter-interoperability. This paper presents analog and digital base-band circuits that are able to support GSM (with Edge), WCDMA (UMTS), WLAN and Bluetooth using reconfigurable building blocks. The blocks can trade off power consumption for performance on the fly, depending on the standard to be supported and the required QoS (Quality of Service) leve

LINC based amplifier architectures for power efficient wireless transmitters

Wireless communication trends Performance measuring of a communication system Power amplifiers and transmitters Power efficiency enhancement techniques Design and Optimization of LINC transmitter for OFDM applications LINC concept LINC signal decomposition LINC efficiency and combiner technologies Design optimization of LINC system Mismatch (imbalance) effects Advanced LINC transmitter architectures The 2X1 LINC transmitter system The 2X2 LINC transmitter system Mismatch effects

Digital Pre-distortion for Interference Reduction in Dynamic Spectrum Access Networks

Given the ever increasing reliance of today’s society on ubiquitous wireless access, the paradigm of dynamic spectrum access (DSA) as been proposed and implemented for utilizing the limited wireless spectrum more efficiently. Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is growing in popularity for adoption into wireless services employing DSA frame- work, due to its high bandwidth efficiency and resiliency to multipath fading. While these advantages have been proven for many wireless applications, including LTE-Advanced and numerous IEEE wireless standards, one potential drawback of OFDM or its non-contiguous variant, NC-OFDM, is that it exhibits high peak-to-average power ratios (PAPR), which can induce in-band and out-of-band (OOB) distortions when the peaks of the waveform enter the compression region of the transmitter power amplifier (PA). Such OOB emissions can interfere with existing neighboring transmissions, and thereby severely deteriorate the reliability of the DSA network. A performance-enhancing digital pre-distortion (DPD) technique compensating for PA and in-phase/quadrature (I/Q) modulator distortions is proposed in this dissertation. Al- though substantial research efforts into designing DPD schemes have already been presented in the open literature, there still exists numerous opportunities to further improve upon the performance of OOB suppression for NC-OFDM transmission in the presence of RF front-end impairments. A set of orthogonal polynomial basis functions is proposed in this dissertation together with a simplified joint DPD structure. A performance analysis is presented to show that the OOB emissions is reduced to approximately 50 dBc with proposed algorithms employed during NC-OFDM transmission. Furthermore, a novel and intuitive DPD solution that can minimize the power regrowth at any pre-specified frequency in the spurious domain is proposed in this dissertation. Conventional DPD methods have been proven to be able to effectively reduce the OOB emissions that fall on top of adjacent channels. However more spectral emissions in more distant frequency ranges are generated by employing such DPD solutions, which are potentially in violation of the spurious emission limit. At the same time, the emissions in adjacent channel must be kept under the OOB limit. To the best of the author’s knowledge, there has not been extensive research conducted on this topic. Mathematical derivation procedures of the proposed algorithm are provided for both memoryless nonlinear model and memory-based nonlinear model. Simulation results show that the proposed method is able to provide a good balance of OOB emissions and emissions in the far out spurious domain, by reducing the spurious emissions by 4-5 dB while maintaining the adjacent channel leakage ratio (ACLR) improvement by at least 10 dB, comparing to the PA output spectrum without any DPD

Linear Operation of Switch-Mode Outphasing Power Amplifiers

Radio transceivers are playing an increasingly important role in modern society. The ”connected” lifestyle has been enabled by modern wireless communications. The demand that has been placed on current wireless and cellular infrastructure requires increased spectral efficiency however this has come at the cost of power efficiency. This work investigates methods of improving wireless transceiver efficiency by enabling more efficient power amplifier architectures, specifically examining the role of switch-mode power amplifiers in macro cell scenarios. Our research focuses on the mechanisms within outphasing power amplifiers which prevent linear amplification. From the analysis it was clear that high power non-linear effects are correctable with currently available techniques however non-linear effects around the zero crossing point are not. As a result signal processing techniques for suppressing and avoiding non-linear operation in low power regions are explored. A novel method of digital pre-distortion is presented, and conventional techniques for linearisation are adapted for the particular needs of the outphasing power amplifier. More unconventional signal processing techniques are presented to aid linearisation of the outphasing power amplifier, both zero crossing and bandwidth expansion reduction methods are designed to avoid operation in nonlinear regions of the amplifiers. In combination with digital pre-distortion the techniques will improve linearisation efforts on outphasing systems with dynamic range and bandwidth constraints respectively. Our collaboration with NXP provided access to a digital outphasing power amplifier, enabling empirical analysis of non-linear behaviour and comparative analysis of behavioural modelling and linearisation efforts. The collaboration resulted in a bench mark for linear wideband operation of a digital outphasing power amplifier. The complimentary linearisation techniques, bandwidth expansion reduction and zero crossing reduction have been evaluated in both simulated and practical outphasing test benches. Initial results are promising and indicate that the benefits they provide are not limited to the outphasing amplifier architecture alone. Overall this thesis presents innovative analysis of the distortion mechanisms of the outphasing power amplifier, highlighting the sensitivity of the system to environmental effects. Practical and novel linearisation techniques are presented, with a focus on enabling wide band operation for modern communications standards

Optimization Of 5.7 Ghz Class E Power Amplifier For The Application Of Envelope Elimination And Restoration

Tez (Yüksek Lisans) -- İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi, Fen Bilimleri Enstitüsü, 2007Thesis (M.Sc.) -- İstanbul Technical University, Institute of Science and Technology, 2007Rekabetin yoğun olduğu günümüzde tasarımcılar hafif, boyutları daha küçük ve düşük güçle çalışan yüksek performanslı ürün geliştirmenin yollarını aramaktadırlar. RF alıcı uygulamalarında güç kuvvetlendiricileri en fazla güç sarfiyatının olduğu bölümdür. Kablosuz iletişim sistemlerinde güç küvvetlendiricisi verimi maliyeti direkt olarak etkilemektedir. Teorik olarak %100 verim elde edilebilen E-sınıfı güç kuvvetlendiricileri transistorların açık/kapalı durum geçişlerinde güç sarfiyatını minimize edebilmektedir. Ayrıca çıkış gerilimi kaynak gerilimi ile doğrusal değişmektedir. Bu çalışmada E sınıfı güç kuvvetlendiricilerinin tasarım metodları ele alınmıştır. 5.7 GHz de çalışan birinde toplu devre elemanları, diğerinde transmisyon hattı elemanları kullanımış E sınıfı güç kuvvetlendiricileri tasarlanmıştır. Her iki devrede de %50 güç ekli verim (GEV) ve 500mW çıkış gücü elde edilmiştir. Sinyaldeki bozulmayı azaltmak için başvurulan doğrusallaştırma yöntemi Zarf Yoketme ve Tekrar Oluşturma metodudur. E sınıfı kuvvetlendiricinin Zarf Yoketme ve Tekrar Oluşturma yöntemi kullanılarak doğrusallaştırılmasıyla IMD bileşenlerinde 7.5 dB azalmış olup seviyesi gerçek işaretin 20dB altındadır.In today’s competitive, manufactures and product developers are seeking ways to build high performance devices that are lighter in weight, smaller in size and operating at lower power. In transceiver applications one module is responsible for a large portion of the power consumption - the power amplifier. The efficiency of the power amplifier has a direct impact on the cost of the wireless communication system. The class-E amplifier has a maximum theoretical efficiency of 100%. Class E power amplifiers have the ability to minimize power loss during on/off transitions of the transistor. Also, the output voltage varies linearly with the supply voltage. This thesis describes the design and the linearization methodology of the Class E amplifiers. Two class-E amplifiers operating at 5.7 GHz are presented. One of them is a lumped elements based circuit and the other is a transmission lines based circuit. Both circuit show good performance with 50% PAE and have 500mW output power. Envelope elimination and restoration is the linearization method chosen to achieve reduction of signal distortion. Linearization Class E PA using EER system provides an additional 7.5 dB reduction in intermodulation distortion products, achieving a minimum distortion level of 20 dB below the fundamental signals.Yüksek LisansM.Sc

Shifting the frontiers of analog and mixed-signal electronics

Nowadays, analog and mixed-signal (AMS) IC designs, mainly found in the frontends of large ICs, are highly dedicated, complex, and costly. They form a bottleneck in the communication with the outside world, determine an upper bound in quality, yield, and flexibility for the IC, and require a significant part of the power dissipation. Operating very close to physical limits, serious boundaries are faced. This paper relates, from a high-level point of view, these boundaries to the Shannon channel capacity and shows how the AMS circuitry forms a matching link in transforming the external analog signals, optimized for the communication medium, to the optimal on-chip signal representation, the digital one, for the IC medium. The signals in the AMS part itself are consequently not optimally matched to the IC medium. To further shift the frontiers of AMS design, a matching-driven design approach is crucial for AMS. Four levels will be addressed: technology-driven, states-driven, redundancy-driven, and nature-driven design. This is done based on an analysis of the various classes of AMS signals and their specific properties, seen from the angle of redundancy. This generic, but abstract way of looking at the design process will be substantiated with many specific examples

Phase manipulation for efficient radio frequency transmission

Thesis (Sc. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2012.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 109-112).Power amplifiers (PAs) for microwave communications are generally the most power-hungry element of a transmitter. High linearity is required for modern digital communications standards, and often is achieved at the expense of efficiency. Outphasing architectures, which combine multiple nonlinear but efficient switching PAs into a system with an overall linear response, represent a promising strategy for breaking the efficiency/linearity tradeoff inherent to conventional PAs. This work explores methods for efficient PA design using outphasing techniques. Two aspects of outphasing design are considered. First, a wide-band phase modulator is introduced that uses a single current-steering digital to analog converter (DAC) structure and discrete clock prerotation. This topology takes advantage of specifications particular to outphasing architectures to reduce matching requirements as compared to a two-DAC phase modulator while providing wideband capability. The phase modulator is demonstrated in 65-nm CMOS, operates over a carrier frequency range of 1.2-4.2 GHz and has a 12-bit phase resolution and sample rate of 160 MSamples/second. The second technique is a novel four-way lossless power combiner and outphasing system which provides ideally lossless power combining along with resistive loading of switching power amplifiers over a wide output range. This work presents the first-ever demonstration of this system at microwave frequencies. Particular attention is paid to the microwave-specific aspects of implementation. A 60-W GaN prototype demonstrates the outphasing and dynamic performance, which closely matches the expected performance despite the challenges of operating at microwave frequencies.by Taylor Wallis Barton.Sc.D