André Bourdoux

Non-reciprocal transceivers in OFDM/SDMA systems: impact and mitigation

Channel reciprocity is needed in SDMA or MIMO downlink pre-filtering when the channel knowledge is acquired in the uplink. We first show analytically that the non-reciprocity of the base station analog hardware, which is part of the channel, introduces a very high level of multi-user interference and quantify the effect of the non-reciprocity by means of simulations. We then propose a novel calibration technique at the base station that enables to compensate for the non-reciprocity and reduce the MUI to a negligible value while having a low implementation cost.

Mixed Analog/Digital Beamforming for 60 GHz MIMO Frequency Selective Channels

Multi-antenna architectures, where beamforming processing is shared between analog and digital, are of great interest for future multi-Gbps wireless systems operating at 60 GHz. In this spectrum band, wireless systems can integrate large antenna arrays in a very small volume thanks to a wavelength of about 5 mm and thus provide the required gain to meet the severe link budget. However, the cost and power consumption of an analog front-end (AFE) chain, that carries out translation between radio frequency (RF) and digital baseband, are too high at 60 GHz to afford one AFE for each antenna. In this paper, we consider low cost multi-antenna architectures with a lower number of AFE chains than antenna elements. We propose a joint design of transmit-receive mixed analog/digital beamformers that aim at maximizing the received average signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR). The proposed scheme shows better performance than state-of-art solutions, which combine antenna selection techniques and digital beamforming.

A performance and complexity comparison of auto-correlation and cross-correlation for OFDM burst synchronization

A symbol timing synchronization scheme is critical in the design of an OFDM receiver. Large timing errors can result in a loss of orthogonality between subcarriers, ISI and severe bit error degradation. To minimize this degradation, standards incorporate preambles suitable for two kinds of synchronization algorithms: auto-correlation and crosscorrelation. Unfortunately, the performance and complexity tradeoffs between these algorithms have not been well explored. To address this problem, we have built an FPGA implementation of a synchronization system using both autocorrelation and cross-correlation. Based on our results, in this paper we propose a novel cross-correlation synchronizer and hardware architecture. We then compare its performance and complexity to auto-correlation algorithms for HiperLAN/2 and IEEE 802.11a preambles.

OFDM-MIMO WLAN AP front-end gain and phase mismatch calibration

The work presents a front-end gain and phase mismatch calibration scheme for OFDM-MIMO/TDD WLAN systems using transmit-processing, where complete channel reciprocity and calibration of the access point (AP) hardware is needed. Simulation results for a single-user 2/spl times/2 OFDM-MIMO system with QAM-64 modulation show that our calibration method can reduce the implementation loss to as little as 0.2 dB at a coded BER of 10/sup -5/ The calibration scheme has been implemented and demonstrated by IMEC.

Low-complexity linear frequency domain equalization for continuous phase modulation

In this paper, we develop a new low-complexity linear frequency domain equalization (FDE) approach for continuous phase modulated (CPM) signals. As a CPM signal is highly correlated, calculating a linear minimum mean square error (MMSE) channel equalizer requires the inversion of a nondiagonal matrix, even in the frequency domain. In order to regain the FDE advantage of reduced computational complexity, we show that this matrix can be approximated by a block-diagonal matrix without performance loss. Moreover, our MMSE equalizer can be simplified to a low-complexity zero-forcing equalizer. The proposed techniques can be applied to any CPM scheme. To support this theory we present a new polyphase matrix model, valid for any block-based CPM system. Simulation results in a 60 GHz environment show that our reduced-complexity MMSE equalizer significantly outperforms the state of the art linear MMSE receiver for large modulation indices, while it performs only slightly worse for small ones.

Dual-polarization OFDM-OQAM for communications over optical fibers with coherent detection.

In order to improve the spectral efficiency of coherent optical communication systems, it has recently been proposed to make use of the orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing offset quadrature amplitude modulation (OFDM-OQAM). Multiple optical channels spaced in the frequency domain by the symbol rate can be transmitted orthogonally, even if each channel overlaps significantly in frequency with its two adjacent channels. The solutions proposed until now in the literature unfortunately only address a single polarization communication, and therefore do not benefit from the capacity gain reached when two polarizations are used to transmit independent information signals. The aim of the present paper is to propose a receiver architecture that can decouple the two polarizations. We build an equalizer per channel at twice the symbol rate and optimize it based on the minimum mean square error (MMSE) criterion. We demonstrate the efficiency of the resulting system compared to the Nyquist wavelength-division multiplexing (N-WDM) system both in terms of performance and complexity. We also assess the system sensitivity to transmit synchronization errors and show that system can even work under significant synchronization errors.

RF-to-Baseband Digitization in 40 nm CMOS With RF Bandpass

A fourth-order continuous-time RF bandpass ΔΣ ADC has been fabricated in 40 nm CMOS for fs/4 operation around a 2.22 GHz central frequency. A complete system has been implemented on the test chip including the ADC core, the fractional-N PLL with clock generation network, and the digital decimation filters and downconversion (DFD). The quantizers of the ADC are six times interleaved enabling a polyphase structure for the DFD and relaxing clock frequency requirements. This quantization scheme realizes a sampling rate of 8.88 GS/s which is the highest sampling speed for RF bandpass ΔΣ ADCs reported in standard CMOS to date enabling high oversampling ratios for RF digitization without compromising power-efficient implementation of the DFD. Measurements show that the ADC achieves a dynamic range of 48 dB in a band of 80 MHz with an IIP3 of 1 dBm.

\Delta\Sigma

Analog BeamForming (ABF) with one scalar weight per antenna is an attractive technique for low-cost, low-power 60 GHz multi-antenna wireless communication systems. However, the design of the corresponding joint transmit and receive (Tx/Rx) ABF optimization algorithms is still challenging in the case of multipath channels due to the constraint of having only one scalar weight per antenna. In this paper, we aim at maximizing the average Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) at the input of the equalizer and analytically derive close-to-optimal Tx/Rx scalar weights. We show that the required Channel State Information (CSI) for joint Tx/Rx ABF weights computation is the inner product between all Tx/Rx channel impulse response pairs. Taking the channel length into account, a training-based estimation strategy of this CSI is proposed. Simulation results carried out in a typical 60 GHz multipath environment show that the proposed scheme outperforms the existing ABF schemes in term of BER performances.

Modulator and Polyphase Decimation Filter

The increasing need for functional flexibility in radio systems to accommodate the proliferation of wireless standards will make implementation of wireless standards on reconfigurable radio platforms the only viable option in the coming years. We address the choice of the reconfigurable analog receiver architecture for mobile, battery-powered terminals and analyze in detail two extreme cases: a state-of-the-art fully integrated zero-IF receiver and an RF bandpass sampling architecture. Finally, we discuss how SDR receivers pave the way towards more sophisticated cognitive radios that sense the wireless environment and adapt their communication parameters

Joint Transmit and Receive Analog Beamforming in 60 GHz MIMO Multipath Channels

Short-range digital communications at 60 GHz have recently received a lot of interest because of the huge bandwidth available at those frequencies. The capacity offered to the users could finally reach 2 Gbps, enabling the deployment of new multimedia applications. However, the design of analog components is critical, leading to a possible high nonideality of the front end (FE). The goal of this paper is to compare the suitability of two different air interfaces characterized by a low peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) to support communications at 60 GHz. On one hand, we study the offset-QPSK (OQPSK) modulation combined with a channel frequency-domain equalization (FDE). On the other hand, we study the class of continuous phase modulations (CPM) combined with a channel time-domain equalizer (TDE). We evaluate their performance in terms of bit error rate (BER) considering a typical indoor propagation environment at 60 GHz. For both air interfaces, we analyze the degradation caused by the phase noise (PN) coming from the local oscillators; and by the clipping and quantization errors caused by the analog-to-digital converter (ADC); and finally by the nonlinearity in the PA.