The wide bandwidth employed in the UWB system allows for high data-rate communications, while its broadband nature requires it to coexist with other systems. For instance, several communication systems, such as digital TV, wireless LANs, WiMAX, and satellite receivers, utilize spectrum that is in the UWB band. According to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations, the power spectral density (PSD) of UWB devices for communication applications is limited to less than -41.25dBm/MHz in the 3.1-10.6GHz frequency band, to minimize the impact of UWB on other systems. The impact of narrowband signals on UWB systems can also be significant, even though these signals may occupy a small part of the UWB spectrum, due to their much larger power. The performance and capacity of UWB systems can be significantly degraded by these narrowband interferers. In-band interference can be tolerated by increasing the dynamic-range of the receiver such that the interferers are accommodated within the linear range of the receiver. Alternatively, if the interferers can be avoided altogether, the excessive linearity requirements imposed by the interferers can be relaxed. Such an avoidance mechanism requires the ability to detect interferers. This work presents a low-power and low-cost detector for this purpose that can be employed in multi-band approaches to UWB, including pulse-based schemes, and those employing OFDM. The UWB band is divided into narrower sub-bands in these schemes. During transmission, the carrier hops to a new sub-band every symbol. The detector is designed to provide a profile of interference over the entire UWB spectrum, during each symbol period. This information would be available to the main-path UWB receiver to decide a frequency sequence of sub-band hopping, in order to avoid sub-bands occupied by large interferers. This relaxes the dynamic-range requirement, and hence the power dissipation of the main-path receiver, thus compensating for the extra power dissipation of the detector. The detector is based on a cascade of image-reject downconverter stages. An implementation of the architecture is demonstrated in a 0.13[mu]m CMOS process. / text

published_or_final_version / Electrical and Electronic Engineering / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Power minimization in wireless transceivers has become increasingly critical in recent years with the emergence of standards for short-distance applications in the 900 MHz and 2.4 GHz industrial, scientific and medical (ISM) radio bands. The demand for long battery life and better portability in such applications has led to extensive research on low power radio architectures. This dissertation introduces receiver topologies for low-power systems and presents a theoretical performance analysis of the topologies. Two fully integrated receiver down-converters that demonstrate the concept are implemented in a 0.13-[mu]m CMOS technology. These topologies employ merged mixers and IF amplifiers in order to reduce power dissipation for a given dynamic range performance. In the described topologies, the input stage of a mixer is used to simultaneously provide conversion gain and baseband amplification. This is achieved by applying the down-converted IF signal to input of the mixer. Consequently, the effective conversion gain of the design is greatly enhanced with current requirement primarily determined by the input transconductor. Potential degradation mechanisms related to instability and second-order distortion are identified and solved by the use of appropriate circuit techniques. Noise and linearity performance of the down-converters is analyzed and compared to that of conventional cascaded design counterparts. The potential for enhancement of IIP3 performance through cancellation of nonlinear products is discussed. Potential extensions of the above work including feedback-based architectures that exploit multiple loops for further maximizing the power efficiency of receiver front-ends are also presented.

Αντικείμενο αυτής της διπλωματικής εργασίας είναι η διερεύνηση των τεχνικών διαφορισμού στους ψηφιακούς δέκτες των σύγχρονων ασύρματων δικτύων. / Purpose of this paper is the examination of combining techniques at digital receivers of modern wireless networks.

No description available.

The clouds of gas and dust that constitute the Interstellar Medium (ISM) within the Milky Way and other galaxies can be studied through the spectral lines of the atoms and molecules. The ISM follows a lifecycle in which each of its phases can be traced through spectral lines in the Terahertz (THz) portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, loosely defined as 0.3 - 3 THz. Using the high spectral resolution afforded by heterodyne instruments, astronomers can potentially disentangle the large-scale structure and kinematics within these clouds. In order to study the ISM over large size scales, large format THz heterodyne arrays are needed. The research presented in this dissertation focuses on the development of two heterodyne array receiver systems for ISM studies, SuperCam and a Super-THz (>3 THz) receiver. SuperCam is a 64-pixel heterodyne imaging array designed for use on ground-based submillimeter telescopes to observe the astrophysically important CO J=3-2 emission line at 345 GHz. The SuperCam focal plane stacks eight, 1x8 mixer subarrays. Each pixel in the array has its own integrated superconductor-insulator-superconductor (SIS) mixer and Low Noise Amplifier (LNA). In spring 2012, SuperCam was installed on the University of Arizona Submillimeter Telescope (SMT) for its first engineering run with 32 active pixels. A second observing run in May 2013 had 52 active pixels. With the outliers removed, the median double sideband receiver temperature was 104 K. The Super-THz receiver is designed to observe the astrophysically important neutral atomic oxygen line at 4.7448 THz. The local oscillator is a third-order distributed feedback Quantum Cascade Laser operating in continuous wave mode at 4.741 THz. A quasi-optical hot electron bolometer is used as the mixer. We record a double sideband receiver noise temperature of 815 K, which is ~7 times the quantum noise limit and an Allan variance time of 15 seconds at an effective noise fluctuation bandwidth of 18 MHz. Heterodyne performance is confirmed by measuring a methanol line spectrum. By combining knowledge of large array formats from SuperCam and quasi-optical mixers, initial tests and designs are presented to expand the single pixel 4.7 THz receiver into a quasi-optical 16-pixel array.

The application of digital signal processing to radio communications has come of age with the advent of low power, high speed microprocessors and over the past five years, various transceiver architectures, utilizing this new technology have been extensively researched. Due to the flexible nature of a software based transceiver, a myriad of possible applications exist and currently the emphasis is on the development of suitable algorithms. The principal aim of this research is the derivation of optimized digital signal processing algorithms applicable to three separate areas of radio communications. Optimized, as used by the author within this dissertation, implies a reasonable compromise between performance, complexity and numerical processing efficiency. This compromise is necessary since the algorithms are applied to a portable transceiver where power consumption, size and weight are limited. The digital signal processing algorithms described by this research is as follows:- 1. The derivation and assessment of a multirate speech amplitude modulation demodulator which exhibits low distortion (typically less than 2%) for a wide range of modulation indices, carrier frequency offsets and deviations. The demodulator is processing efficient and requires only five multiplications and five decisions for every output sample. 2. The derivation and assessment of a low sampling rate speech frequency modulation demodulator for signals whose bandwidth exceed quarter the sampling frequency. The demodulator exhibits low distortion (typically less than 2%) and is processing efficient requiring eighteen multiplications and three decisions for every output sample. 3. The derivation and assessment of a multirate single-sideband suppressed carrier automatic frequency control system which is a combination of a simple second order adaptive line enhancer and a digital phase-locked loop. The processing efficient automatic frequency control system is suited for low signal to noise power conditions, in both stationary and mobile communication channels. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1992.

Ultra wideband (UWB) systems have the potential for extremely high data rate transmission, accurate ranging and positioning. In order to build systems that realize all the potential of UWB, it is first required to understand LT B propagation and the channel properties arising from the propagation. One of the key objectives of this thesis is to explore the characteristics of the UWB indoor channel. Through extensive time domain measurement, the channel reciprocity, spatial correlation, body shadow effect and temporal variation are investigated. Firstly, the existence of channel reciprocity is verified in both baseband and bandpass channels (from 4 GHz to 8 GHz). and channel reciprocity is demonstrated to be frequency independent and distance independent. Secondly, the spatial correlation is investigated on a two dimensional grid, and has been found to follow the trend of a two dimensional Bessel function as spatial distance increases. Thirdly. the interference of the received power and RMS delay spread due to body shadow effect is studied, indicating that the UWB system is highly robust to body shadowing as compared to narrowband systems. Finally. - extensive measurements of the UWB channel's temporal variation in a modern office building under diversified sets of conditions are conducted. A real time measurement is highly robust, to body shadowing as compared to narrowband systems. Finally. extensive measurements of the UWB channel's temporal variation in a modern office building under diversified sets of conditions are conducted. A real time measurement campaign involving mobile scatterers was performed in a typical office environment, hallway environment and lobby environment, to investigate the signal strength fluctuation, temporal correlation and Doppler spread. The analysis of the measurement results provide useful information for UN B system design. transceiver implementation and performance evaluation. The other goal of the thesis is to demonstrate the implementation of the transmitted reference pulse cluster (TRPC) receiver prototype. This prototype modulates data with binary phase shift keyed pulses. communicates over a wireless link using UWB antennas and a wideband direct conversion front-.end. and samples the auto-correlation output of the received signal for demodulation. Commercial off the shelf components are used to build the receiver, and design con¬siderations are introduced for each part of the receiver in detail.

This thesis discusses the design, fabrication, integration and characterization of millimeter wave passive components using polymer-core-conductor surface micromachining technologies. Several antennas, including a W-band broadband micromachined monopole antenna on a lossy glass substrate, and a Ka-band elevated patch antenna, and a V-band micromachined horn antenna, are presented. All antennas have advantages such as a broad operation band and high efficiency. A low-loss broadband coupler and a high-Q cavity for millimeter-wave applications, using surface micromachining technologies is reported using the same technology. Several low-loss all-pole band-pass filters and transmission-zero filters are developed, respectively. Superior simulation and measurement results show that polymer-core-conductor surface micromachining is a powerful technology for the integration of high-performance cavity, coupler and filters. Integration of high performance millimeter-wave transceiver front-end is also presented for the first time. By elevating a cavity-filter-based duplexer and a horn antenna on top of the substrate and using air as the filler, the dielectric loss can be eliminated. A full-duplex transceiver front-end integrated with amplifiers are designed, fabricated, and comprehensively characterized to demonstrate advantages brought by this surface micromachining technology. It is a low loss and substrate-independent solution for millimeter-wave transceiver integration.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008. / Committee Chair: John Papapolymerou; Committee Chair: Manos Tentzeris; Committee Member: Gordon Stuber; Committee Member: John Cressler; Committee Member: John Z. Zhang; Committee Member: Joy Laskar