Dirty RF: A New Paradigm

Abstract:
The implementation challenge for new low-cost low-power wireless modem transceivers has continuously been growing with increased modem performance, bandwidth, and carrier frequency. Up to now we have been designing transceivers in a way that we are able to keep the analog (RF) problem domain widely separated from the digital signal processing design. However, with today’s deep sub-micron technology, analog impairments - 'dirt effects' - are reaching a new problem level which requires a paradigm shift in the design of transceivers. Examples of these impairments are phase noise, non-linearities, IQ imbalance, ADC impairments, etc. In the world of "Dirty RF" we assume to design digital signal processing such that we can cope with a new level of impairments, allowing lee-way in the requirements set on future RF sub-systems. This paper gives an overview of the topic and presents analytical evaluations of the performance losses due to RF impairments as well as algorithms that allow to live with imperfect RF by compensating the resulting error effects using digital baseband processing.