Not applicable.
The disclosed subject matter relates generally to telecommunication and, more particularly, to a method and apparatus for compensating for transceiver impairments.
In telecommunication, direct-conversion techniques involve mixing a baseband signal with a carrier signal without using an intermediate frequency. A direct conversion receiver (DCR), also known as homodyne, synchrodyne, or zero-IF receiver, may then demodulate incoming signals by mixing the incoming signal with a local oscillator signal synchronized in frequency to the carrier signal. The baseband signal may then be obtained simply by low-pass filtering the mixer output, without requiring further detection.
A direct conversion transceiver may be implemented on a single chip, making it inexpensive and versatile. However, the transmission and receive paths for the base band signals (i.e., in-phase (I) and quadrature (Q)) are independently formed. Small variances in these paths introduce amplitude and phase variations in the respective transmit and receive signals, otherwise referred to as IQ imbalance impairments.
To calibrate a direct conversion transceiver, the impairments must be identified and compensated for prior to use. This compensation is difficult because it is necessary to calibrate the direct conversion transmitter and direct conversion receiver individually using a separate external reference for each path. If an uncompensated receiver is used to calibrate a transmitter over the complete frequency span, the transmitter calibration will be corrupted by the impairments of the receiver, and vice versa.
This section of this document is intended to introduce various aspects of art that may be related to various aspects of the disclosed subject matter described and/or claimed below. This section provides background information to facilitate a better understanding of the various aspects of the disclosed subject matter. It should be understood that the statements in this section of this document are to be read in this light, and not as admissions of prior art. The disclosed subject matter is directed to overcoming, or at least reducing the effects of, one or more of the problems set forth above.
The following presents a simplified summary of the disclosed subject matter in order to provide a basic understanding of some aspects of the disclosed subject matter. This summary is not an exhaustive overview of the disclosed subject matter. It is not intended to identify key or critical elements of the disclosed subject matter or to delineate the scope of the disclosed subject matter. Its sole purpose is to present some concepts in a simplified form as a prelude to the more detailed description that is discussed later.
One aspect of the disclosed subject matter is seen in a method for compensating a transceiver for impairments. The method includes transmitting a plurality of partial bandwidth training signals using a transmitter. A plurality of response signals of a receiver having a bandwidth and exhibiting receiver impairments is captured. Each response signal is associated with one of the partial bandwidth training signals. Each of the partial bandwidth training signals is associated with a portion of the receiver bandwidth. A plurality of partial compensation filters is generated based on the plurality of response signals. Each partial compensation filter is associated with one of the response signals. The partial compensation filters are combined to configure a receiver compensation filter operable to compensate for the receiver impairments.
Another aspect of the disclosed subject matter is seen a transceiver including a transmitter, a receiver, a receiver capture unit, a receiver compensation filter, and a receiver compensation estimation unit. The transmitter is operable to transmit a plurality of partial bandwidth training signals. The receiver has impairments and is operable to receive the plurality of partial bandwidth training signals. The receiver capture unit is operable to capture a plurality of response signals of the receiver. Each response signal is associated with one of the partial bandwidth training signals. Each of the partial bandwidth training signals is associated with a portion of the receiver bandwidth. The receiver compensation filter is operable to filter signals received by the receiver. The receiver compensation estimation unit is operable to generate a plurality of partial compensation filters based on the plurality of response signals. Each partial compensation filter is associated with one of the response signals. The receiver compensation estimation unit is operable to combine the partial compensation filters to configure the receiver compensation filter to compensate for the receiver impairments.
The disclosed subject matter will hereafter be described with reference to the accompanying drawings, wherein like reference numerals denote like elements, and:
While the disclosed subject matter is susceptible to various modifications and alternative forms, specific embodiments thereof have been shown by way of example in the drawings and are herein described in detail. It should be understood, however, that the description herein of specific embodiments is not intended to limit the disclosed subject matter to the particular forms disclosed, but on the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives failing within the spirit and scope of the disclosed subject matter as defined by the appended claims.
One or more specific embodiments of the disclosed subject matter will be described below. It is specifically intended that the disclosed subject matter not be limited to the embodiments and illustrations contained herein, but include modified forms of those embodiments including portions of the embodiments and combinations of elements of different embodiments as come within the scope of the following claims. It should be appreciated that in the development of any such actual implementation, as in any engineering or design project, numerous implementation-specific decisions must be made to achieve the developers' specific goals, such as compliance with system-related and business related constraints, which may vary from one implementation to another. Moreover, it should be appreciated that such a development effort might be complex and time consuming, but would nevertheless be a routine undertaking of design, fabrication, and manufacture for those of ordinary skill having the benefit of this disclosure. Nothing in this application is considered critical or essential to the disclosed subject matter unless explicitly indicated as being “critical” or “essential.”
The disclosed subject matter will now be described with reference to the attached figures. Various structures, systems and devices are schematically depicted in the drawings for purposes of explanation only and so as to not obscure the disclosed subject matter with details that are well known to those skilled in the art. Nevertheless, the attached drawings are included to describe and explain illustrative examples of the disclosed subject matter. The words and phrases used herein should be understood and interpreted to have a meaning consistent with the understanding of those words and phrases by those skilled in the relevant art. No special definition of a term or phrase, i.e., a definition that is different from the ordinary and customary meaning as understood by those skilled in the art, is intended to be implied by consistent usage of the term or phrase herein. To the extent that a term or phrase is intended to have a special meaning, i.e., a meaning other than that understood by skilled artisans, such a special definition will be expressly set forth in the specification in a definitional manner that directly and unequivocally provides the special definition for the term or phrase.
Referring now to the drawings wherein like reference numbers correspond to similar components throughout the several views and, specifically, referring to
The transmit path 110 includes a transmitter 111 including a modulator 112 and a digital-to-analog converter (DAC) 113, a transmitter IQ compensation filter 114, a transmitter IQ compensation estimation unit 115, a transmitter capture unit 116, a power amplifier 117, and a switch 118 for selecting between normal data traffic or a training signal 119. The receive path 120 includes a receiver 121 including a demodulator 122 and an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) 123, a receiver IQ compensation filter 124, a receiver IQ compensation estimation unit 125, and a receiver capture unit 126. The sampling receive path 130 includes a sampling receiver 131 including a demodulator 132 and an ADC 133, a sampling receiver IQ compensation filter 134, a sampling receiver IQ compensation estimation unit 135, and a sampling receiver capture unit 136. The transmitter 111, receiver 121, and sampling receiver 131 are implemented using hardware, while the various units illustrated in
The transmitter 111, receiver 121, and sampling receiver 131 employ inphase (I) and quadrature (Q) signals. The separate paths for these components are not shown for ease of illustration. Generally, the I and Q paths are separate, such that amplitude and phase variations exist between the paths. These variations cause separate impairments in the transmitter 111, the receiver 121, and the sampling receiver 131. The transmitter 111 and the sampling receiver 131 operate in the same frequency band. In the illustrated embodiment, the sampling receiver 131 is employed to compensate for transmitter impairments. After the transmitter 111 is compensated, it may be used to generate a training signal for compensating the receiver 121. However, because the sampling receiver 131 is used to estimate and compensate the transmitter 111, the impairments of the sampling receiver 131 must first be estimated and compensated. As known to those of ordinary skill in the art, the sampling receiver 131 may also be employed for functions such as digital predistortion or time division duplexing (i.e., functioning as the only receiver).
For a typical IQ transmitter 111, the unimpaired baseband signal may be represented by:
s(t)=sI(t)+jsQ(t), (1)
where sI(t), sQ(t) are the baseband in-phase and quadrature signal components.
The output of the modulator 112 is given by:
x(t)=i(t)+jq(t), (2)
where
i(t)=αI[sI(t)cos(φI)+sQ(t)sin(φI)]
q(t)=αQ[sQ(t)cos(φQ)+sI(t)sin(φQ)]′ (3)
and αI,αQ,φI,φQ are the modulator imbalance errors (i.e., impairments).
Equation (2) can be rewritten in the form of a summation of two components comprised of a desired signal and its conjugate,
x(t)=α1s(t)+α2s*(t), (4)
where
The complex conjugate of x(t) is given by:
x*(t)=α1*s*(t)+α2*s(t), (6)
and by using x(t) and x*(t) as separate observations, the compensation required to minimize the imbalance errors in αI,αQ,φI,φQ can be determined by exploiting the conjugate symmetry nature of the IQ imbalance. For purposes of illustration, the imbalance errors are provided here as scalar errors, but generally, the imbalance errors are functions of frequency αI(f),αQ(f),φI(f),φQ(f).
To perform the compensation analysis, this symmetrical nature is employed by generating partial bandwidth training signals and measuring the full bandwidth response signal. Signal components arising from impairments are detected in the portion of the bandwidth not covered by the partial bandwidth training signal. The partial bandwidth process is continued until the full bandwidth has been covered, and the response signals from the partial bandwidth iterations are combined to compensate the receiver over the full bandwidth. For purposes of the following examples, a half bandwidth technique is used (i.e., two iterations), however, it is contemplated that more than two partial bandwidth partitions may be employed.
To facilitate compensation, the transmitter 111 is configured to select the training signal 119 using the switch 118 rather than the normal data traffic.
A second iteration is performed to cover the second half of the calibration bandwidth, as shown in
For each partial bandwidth iteration, the sampling receiver capture unit 136 records the response signal. Each partial bandwidth capture is used to generate a compensation filter for the corresponding bandwidth. The sampling receiver IQ compensation estimation unit 135 uses the capture information to generate coefficients for the sampling receiver IQ compensation filter 134.
As indicated above, the baseband signal x(t) can be written as the summation of the desired signal s(t) and its conjugate s*(t). The conjugate component after the down conversion process appears as an image opposite DC in the baseband frequency domain. To perform a compensation, the conjugate contribution in x(t) may be minimized though a blind adaptive estimation of a1 and a2 shown in Equation (5). One exemplary method to separate mixed signals is to use second order statistics to observe and minimize the correlation between the sources, provided that the source s1(t)=s(t) and its conjugate s2(t)=s*(t) are uncorrelated. The signals are assumed to be zero mean, complex Gaussian random processes. The correlation for these signals is given by:
C
ss*(τ)=E[s(t+τ)(s*(t))*]. (6)
Separating in phase and quadrature components in the correlation of Equation (6), results in:
C
ss*(τ)=[Cs
The imaginary part of the correlation is zero if the in-phase and quadrature components of the signal are uncorrelated. The real part of the correlation is zero if the autocorrelation of both in-phase and quadrature components are the same. Although in-phase and quadrature component autocorrelation is not exactly the same for typical 3G and 4G broadband signals, the correlation is small, such that minimization through an adaptive scheme is possible.
The decorrelation of the received signals ŝ1[n], ŝ2[n] requires that Cŝŝ*[0]=E[ŝ1[n]ŝ*2[n]]=0. This condition further leads to
where the mixing coefficients are given by
and Ry
In a simple example, the sampling receiver IQ compensation estimation unit 135 may use the following signal separation procedure.
1. Capture signal x[n] into sampling receiver capture unit 136.
2. Form x1[n]=x[n] and x2[n]=x*[n].
3. Form Signal Estimates.
ŝ
1
[n]=x
1
[n]−w
1
*[n]x
2
[n]
ŝ
2
[n]=x
2
[n]−w
2
*[n]x
1
[n]. (9)
4. Update the coefficient weights.
where μ is a convergence parameter for the LMS algorithm, and Rx
The IQ imbalance observed on typical commercial modulators and demodulators is frequency dependent, and a single tap solution is not usually adequate to compensate the IQ imbalance image across a wide bandwidth. To accommodate wide bandwidth compensation, the expressions in equations (6) through (10) can be vectorized generate a compensation filter of length 2L+1,
W
(n)
=[w
(n)(−L) . . . w(n)(L)]T, −L≦k≦L, (1)
where
w
1
(n+1)(k)=w1(n)(k)+2μ(ŝ2[n]ŝ1*[n−k]), −L≦k≦L
w
2
(n+1)(k)=w1(n)(k)*.
If a solution exists to decorrelate ŝ1[n] and ŝ2*[n], then
C
ŝŝ
*[k]=E[ŝ
1
[n]ŝ*
2
[n−k]]=0, −L≦k≦L (2)
over the filter span 2L+1. This implies that the filter response h1=w1,h2=w2. Although similar in appearance to an LMS form of adaptive equalization, this approach uses the cross correlation in a minimization search.
The steps described above consider the filters W1 and W2 to be odd symmetric, or conjugate filters. Real world demodulators are not symmetric, and exhibit varying frequency response on either side of the receiver center frequency.
To adequately compensate a demodulator using the blind methods outlined above, the sampling receiver IQ compensation estimation unit 135 uses a multiple step approach to build partial bandwidth filters (e.g., two half-band filters). The partial bandwidth filters are then spliced together in the frequency domain to form the final full band compensation filter.
To generate the full bandwidth filter coefficients for the sampling receiver IQ compensation filter 134, the sampling receiver IQ compensation estimation unit 135 converts the time-domain coefficients of each partial bandwidth filter to the frequency domain by a discrete Fourier transform (DFT). The partial bandwidth response signals are joined in the frequency domain to form a frequency response that is defined over the entire receiver bandwidth. At intersection points (e.g., f=0 for two half-bandwidth filters) the responses are averaged to define the midpoint of the full-bandwidth response. Then an inverse DFT is performed to convert the full-bandwidth response back to time domain coefficients.
After the sampling receiver IQ compensation filter 134 has been configured using the partial BW captures to build a full BW compensation filter for the sampling receiver 131, the transmitter 111 can be calibrated by using the compensated sampling receiver 131 as a training reference. As shown in
The subsequent final compensation of the transmitter 111 may be conducted using conventional techniques known to those of ordinary skill in the art. For example, the full bandwidth training signal is captured by the transmitter capture unit 116 prior to being modulated by the modulator 112 (i.e., prior to the transmitter impairments being introduced by the modulator 112). The signal received by the sampling receiver 131 is compensated by the sampling receiver IQ compensation filter 134 to remove the sampling receiver impairments. The filtered signal is then provided to the transmitter IQ compensation estimation unit 115, which compares the compensated received signal to the transmit signal captured by the transmitter capture unit 116. Prior to transmitter compensation, the compensated received signal includes transmitter impairments. By comparing the compensated received signal to the transmit signal, the transmitter IQ compensation estimation unit 115 identifies the impairments and generates coefficients for the transmitter IQ compensation filter 114 to compensate for the transmitter impairments. For clarity and to avoid obscuring the present subject matter, these conventional techniques are not described in greater detail herein.
The techniques described herein allow compensation of the transmitter 111 using the compensated receiver 131 without the use of an external training signal. This approach simplifies the compensation techniques, thereby potentially reducing the complexity and cost of the transceiver.
The particular embodiments disclosed above are illustrative only, as the disclosed subject matter may be modified and practiced in different but equivalent manners apparent to those skilled in the art having the benefit of the teachings herein. Furthermore, no limitations are intended to the details of construction or design herein shown, other than as described in the claims below. It is therefore evident that the particular embodiments disclosed above may be altered or modified and all such variations are considered within the scope and spirit of the disclosed subject matter. Accordingly, the protection sought herein is as set forth in the claims below.