Reference Receiver Based Digital Self-Interference Cancellation in MIMO Full-Duplex Transceivers

In this paper we propose and analyze a novel self-interference cancellation structure for in-band MIMO full-duplex transceivers. The proposed structure utilizes reference receiver chains to obtain reference signals for digital self-interference cancellation, which means that all the transmitter-induced nonidealities will be included in the digital cancellation signal. To the best of our knowledge, this type of a structure has not been discussed before in the context of full-duplex transceivers. First, we will analyze the overall achievable performance of the proposed cancellation scheme, while also providing some insight into the possible bottlenecks. We also provide a detailed formulation of the actual cancellation procedure, and perform an analysis into the effect of the received signal of interest on self-interference coupling channel estimation. The achieved performance of the proposed reference receiver based digital cancellation procedure is then assessed and verified with full waveform simulations. The analysis and waveform simulation results show that under practical transmitter RF/analog impairment levels, the proposed reference receiver based cancellation architecture can provide substantially better self-interference suppression than any existing solution, despite deploying only low-complexity linear digital processing.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures. To be presented in the 2014 IEEE Broadband Wireless Access Worksho

Feasibility of In-band Full-Duplex Radio Transceivers with Imperfect RF Components: Analysis and Enhanced Cancellation Algorithms

In this paper we provide an overview regarding the feasibility of in-band full-duplex transceivers under imperfect RF components. We utilize results and findings from the recent research on full-duplex communications, while introducing also transmitter-induced thermal noise into the analysis. This means that the model of the RF impairments used in this paper is the most comprehensive thus far. By assuming realistic parameter values for the different transceiver components, it is shown that IQ imaging and transmitter-induced nonlinearities are the most significant sources of distortion in in-band full-duplex transceivers, in addition to linear self-interference. Motivated by this, we propose a novel augmented nonlinear digital self-interference canceller that is able to model and hence suppress all the essential transmitter imperfections jointly. This is also verified and demonstrated by extensive waveform simulations.Comment: 7 pages, presented in the CROWNCOM 2014 conferenc

Digital Predistortion in Large-Array Digital Beamforming Transmitters

In this article, we propose a novel digital predistortion (DPD) solution that allows to considerably reduce the complexity resulting from linearizing a set of power amplifiers (PAs) in single-user large-scale digital beamforming transmitters. In contrast to current state-of-the art solutions that assume a dedicated DPD per power amplifier, which is unfeasible in the context of large antenna arrays, the proposed solution only requires a single DPD in order to linearize an arbitrary number of power amplifiers. To this end, the proposed DPD predistorts the signal at the input of the digital precoder based on minimizing the nonlinear distortion of the combined signal at the intended receiver direction. This is a desirable feature, since the resulting emissions in other directions get partially diluted due to less coherent superposition. With this approach, only a single DPD is required, yielding great complexity and energy savings.Comment: 8 pages, Accepted for publication in Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computer

Cancellation of Power Amplifier Induced Nonlinear Self-Interference in Full-Duplex Transceivers

Recently, full-duplex (FD) communications with simultaneous transmission and reception on the same channel has been proposed. The FD receiver, however, suffers from inevitable self-interference (SI) from the much more powerful transmit signal. Analogue radio-frequency (RF) and baseband, as well as digital baseband, cancellation techniques have been proposed for suppressing the SI, but so far most of the studies have failed to take into account the inherent nonlinearities of the transmitter and receiver front-ends. To fill this gap, this article proposes a novel digital nonlinear interference cancellation technique to mitigate the power amplifier (PA) induced nonlinear SI in a FD transceiver. The technique is based on modeling the nonlinear SI channel, which is comprised of the nonlinear PA, the linear multipath SI channel, and the RF SI canceller, with a parallel Hammerstein nonlinearity. Stemming from the modeling, and appropriate parameter estimation, the known transmit data is then processed with the developed nonlinear parallel Hammerstein structure and suppressed from the receiver path at digital baseband. The results illustrate that with a given IIP3 figure for the PA, the proposed technique enables higher transmit power to be used compared to existing linear SI cancellation methods. Alternatively, for a given maximum transmit power level, a lower-quality PA (i.e., lower IIP3) can be used.Comment: To appear in proceedings of the 2013 Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems & Computer

Modeling and Efficient Cancellation of Nonlinear Self-Interference in MIMO Full-Duplex Transceivers

This paper addresses the modeling and digital cancellation of self-interference in in-band full-duplex (FD) transceivers with multiple transmit and receive antennas. The self-interference modeling and the proposed nonlinear spatio-temporal digital canceller structure takes into account, by design, the effects of I/Q modulator imbalances and power amplifier (PA) nonlinearities with memory, in addition to the multipath self-interference propagation channels and the analog RF cancellation stage. The proposed solution is the first cancellation technique in the literature which can handle such a self-interference scenario. It is shown by comprehensive simulations with realistic RF component parameters and with two different PA models to clearly outperform the current state-of-the-art digital self-interference cancellers, and to clearly extend the usable transmit power range.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures. To be presented in the 2014 International Workshop on Emerging Technologies for 5G Wireless Cellular Network

Digital Front-End Signal Processing with Widely-Linear Signal Models in Radio Devices

Necessitated by the demand for ever higher data rates, modern communications waveforms have increasingly wider bandwidths and higher signal dynamics. Furthermore, radio devices are expected to transmit and receive a growing number of different waveforms from cellular networks, wireless local area networks, wireless personal area networks, positioning and navigation systems, as well as broadcast systems. On the other hand, commercial wireless devices are expected to be cheap, be relatively small in size, and have a long battery life. The demands for flexibility and higher data rates on one hand, and the constraints on production cost, device size, and energy efficiency on the other, pose difficult challenges on the design and implementation of future radio transceivers. Under these diametric constraints, in order to keep the overall implementation cost and size feasible, the use of simplified radio architectures and relatively low-cost radio electronics are necessary. This notion is even more relevant for multiple antenna systems, where each antenna has a dedicated radio front-end. The combination of simplified radio front-ends and low-cost electronics implies that various nonidealities in the remaining analog radio frequency (RF) modules, stemming from unavoidable physical limitations and material variations of the used electronics, are expected to play a critical role in these devices. Instead of tightening the specifications and tolerances of the analog circuits themselves, a more cost-effective solution in many cases is to compensate for these nonidealities in the digital domain. This line of research has been gaining increasing interest in the last 10-15 years, and is also the main topic area of this work. The direct-conversion radio principle is the current and future choice for building low-cost but flexible, multi-standard radio transmitters and receivers. The direct-conversion radio, while simple in structure and integrable on a single chip, suffers from several performance degrading circuit impairments, which have historically prevented its use in wideband, high-rate, and multi-user systems. In the last 15 years, with advances in integrated circuit technologies and digital signal processing, the direct-conversion principle has started gaining popularity. Still, however, much work is needed to fully realize the potential of the direct-conversion principle. This thesis deals with the analysis and digital mitigation of the implementation nonidealities of direct-conversion transmitters and receivers. The contributions can be divided into three parts. First, techniques are proposed for the joint estimation and predistortion of in-phase/quadrature-phase (I/Q) imbalance, power amplifier (PA) nonlinearity, and local oscillator (LO) leakage in wideband direct-conversion transmitters. Second, methods are developed for estimation and compensation of I/Q imbalance in wideband direct-conversion receivers, based on second-order statistics of the received communication waveforms. Third, these second-order statistics are analyzed for second-order stationary and cyclostationary signals under several other system impairments related to circuit implementation and the radio channel. This analysis brings new insights on I/Q imbalances and their compensation using the proposed algorithms. The proposed algorithms utilize complex-valued signal processing throughout, and naturally assume a widely-linear form, where both the signal and its complex-conjugate are filtered and then summed. The compensation processing is situated in the digital front-end of the transceiver, as the last step before digital-to-analog conversion in transmitters, or in receivers, as the first step after analog-to-digital conversion. The compensation techniques proposed herein have several common, unique, attributes: they are designed for the compensation of frequency-dependent impairments, which is seen critical for future wideband systems; they require no dedicated training data for learning; the estimators are computationally efficient, relying on simple signal models, gradient-like learning rules, and solving sets of linear equations; they can be applied in any transceiver type that utilizes the direct-conversion principle, whether single-user or multi-user, or single-carrier or multi-carrier; they are modulation, waveform, and standard independent; they can also be applied in multi-antenna transceivers to each antenna subsystem separately. Therefore, the proposed techniques provide practical and effective solutions to real-life circuit implementation problems of modern communications transceivers. Altogether, considering the algorithm developments with the extensive experimental results performed to verify their functionality, this thesis builds strong confidence that low-complexity digital compensation of analog circuit impairments is indeed applicable and efficient

Performance Comparison of Constant Envelope and Zero-forcing Precoders in Multiuser Massive MIMO

In this article, the adoption and performance of a constant envelope (CE) type spatial precoder is addressed in large-scale multiuser MIMO based cellular network. We first formulate an efficient computing solution to obtain the antenna samples of such CE precoder. We then evaluate the achievable CE precoder based multiuser downlink (DL) system performance and compare it with the corresponding performance of more ordinary zero-forcing (ZF) spatial precoder. We specifically also analyze how realistic highly nonlinear power amplifiers (PAs) affect the achievable DL performance, as the individual PA units in large-array or massive MIMO systems are expected to be small, cheap and operating close to saturation for increased energy-efficiency purposes. It is shown that the largely reduced peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) of the PA input signals in the CE precoder based system allows for pushing the PA units harsher towards saturation, while allowing to reach higher signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINRs) at the intended receivers compared to the classical ZF precoder based system. The obtained results indicate that the CE precoder can outperform the ZF precoder by up to 5-6 dBs, in terms of the achievable SINRs, when the PA units are pushed towards their saturating region. Such large gains are a substantial benefit when seeking to improve the spectral and energy-efficiencies of the mobile cellular networks.Comment: Accepted for publication at IEEE WCNC 201