Software

Defined Radio:
Interference
Issue

WRAN
Base Station
Wireless
MIC

Public Safety
Radios
TV Station
Navin Kumar,
WRAN Repeater
Member IEEE, IET(UK), IETE, IE(India)
TV Station

WRAN
Base Station
Grade B
Contour of TV station

26/05/2009
TV Receiver WRAN CPE
 Software Defined Radio (SDR):
Outline
• Introduction
– Motivation, Benifits, Complexity, etc.
• Architecture
• Challenges and Goals
• Concern and Issues
• State of Art
• Conclusion
• Further reading and references
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 Introduction
What’s the SDR ?
• Software-Defined Radio (SDR) refers to the
technology wherein software modules running
on a generic hardware platform consisting of
DSPs and general purpose microprocessors
are used to implement radio functions such as
generation of transmitted signal (modulation)
at transmitter and tuning/detection of received
radio signal (demodulation) at receiver.

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 Introduction ....
Definition by SDR Forum-
Software defined radio is used to describe
radios that provide software control of a
variety of modulation techniques, wide-
band or narrow-band operation,
communications security functions (such
as hopping), and waveform requirements
of current and evolving standards over a
broad frequency range.

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 Introduction ....
Motivation of SDR
• Commercial wireless communication
industry is currently facing problems due
to constant evolution of link-layer protocol
standards (2.5G, 3G, and 4G)
• Existence of incompatible wireless network
technologies in different countries
inhibiting deployment of global roaming
facilities
• Problems in rolling-out new
services/features due to wide-spread
presence of legacy subscriber handsets.
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 Introduction ....
The Key Is Configurability

ADC Reconfigurable DAC Reconfigurable

DAC Processing ADC RF Processing

USER NETWORK
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 Introduction ....
• Reconfigurability –

Reconfigurability provides essential mechanisms to
terminals and network segments to adapt
dynamically, transparently and securely to the most
appropriate radio access technology.
o via selecting pre-installed software components.
o via software downloading and installation.
(Also called end-to-end reconfigurability (E2R))

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 Introduction ....
• End-to-End Recofigurability (E2R Vision)

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 Introduction ....
• Benifits -

Network operators,
Equipment manufacturers Subscribers benefit
the interoperability
can use a common desing From the enhanced
of different networks
for multi-functional radios Funtionality of their
Is enhanced and
leading to increased SDR devices and
system upgrades
market size for a single The possibility to
and bugs fixing are
product. Achieve ubiquitous
easier to manage
and implement. Connectivity.

SDR is a promising technology that has the

potential to realize cost-effective, multi-band
26/05/2009 and multi-standard telematics products with
reduced development cycle.
 Introduction ....
• Wireless providers are attracted to SDR technology because it
enables remote upgrading and reconfiguration of handset and
base station software with new features and patches, as well
as potential interoperability across multiple networks.
• SDR provides a solution for a broad range of communications
and devices used in:

cellular base station and handsets

commercial and military satellites

military radios

public safety

wireless LAN/WAN

aerospace

automotive

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 Introduction ....
• What are the complexities –

It is difficult to engineer wideband, lowloss antennas and
RF converters.

It is also difficult to accurately estimate processing
demand of applications and processing capacity of
reprogrammable DSP/CPU configurations.

In addition, sustaining required data rates across
interprocessor interfaces is problematic.

The frequency bands covered may still be
constrained at the front-end requiring a switch in the
antenna system.
.... Later on we will discuss in detail .....

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 SDR: General Architecture
Reconfigurable Hardware

Implementation of programmable
• Connection set up Digital RF section is limited by the current
• Equalization UP/Down ADC/DAC technologies – not
• Freqeuncy hopping Conversion sufficient in supporting the required
• Timing recovery digital BW, dynamic range and
•26/05/2009
Correlation smpling rate.
 SDR: General Architecture ....
• Software architecture -

Supports link layer

services to higher level
protocols

Handles hardware
resource management,
memory and interrupt
management

Generic Hardware
platform built using
programmable
modules
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 SDR: Architecture ....

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 Challenges
Wide Input bandwidth,
Wide band/multi
High bit-rate, High bit-
band low loss
width, low power
Antenna

Broad band
Duplexer, Broad
band Freq
Synthesizer

Efficient Wideband
Linear Power Amplifier,
Low power Linear Rxr
Front End
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MFLOPS to GFLOPS DSP,
Distributed Processors, Flexible
DSP OS, Low power, Limited
Memory and processing
resources for protocols
26/05/2009
Source - A Abidi, ISSCC Girafe 2006
 Concern and Issues
• The interference types can be divided into:
• External to the system:

Other radio system in the neighborhood

Other similar systems from different companies

• Caused by the same system:

Co-channel interference

Adjacent channel interference

Multi-path interference => Inter-symbol Interference

Multiple access interference

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 Interference ....
• Reference Interference level –
• Some of the reference interference levels (for example, in
GSM case is can be given as -)
 Co-Channel Interference – 9 dB
 Adjacent Interference (200KHz)– -9dB
 Adjacent Interference (400KHz)- -41dB
 Adjacent Intereference (600KHz)- -49dB

• Co-channel Interference caused by –

Nonlinear distortion

Interference arising from other cells

•Up and down link frequency allocations can be set in the range 100MHz to 2.6GHz.

•Achieving such a broad range of operation, whilst maintaining radio performance

within specifications, calls for a very advanced design, including the use of wideband
tuneable filters.
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 Interference ....
• Adjacent Channel Interference

Frequency allocation in adjacent channels

Badly projected receiving filters

Near – far effects

“Spectrum regrowth” nonlinear effects
• Ways to minimize adjacent channel interference:

Frequency allocation that do not consider adjacent
channels

Filter design with improved Q factor

Power Dynamic control

Linearizers

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 Concern and Issues:
Interference
• BTS Throughput Vs Interference –

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Source -SDR ETSI Nokia / 08.02.2007
 Interference ....
• RF Spectrum Usage -

26/05/2009
Source -SDR ETSI Nokia/ 08.02.2007
 Interference ....
• Although spread-spectrum techniques are inherently
resistant to narrow-band interference (NBI) in
communication systems, Enough power spectral
components of interference might pose a serious problem
in providing reliable communication for many wireless
systems having broadband front end.
• These powerful interfering signals may push low noise
amplifiers into a nonlinear region creating very severe
nonlinear distortion.
• When a receiver is sufficiently nonlinear, strong
interference from adjacent channel can produce
harmonics and intermodulation products, overpowering
and effectively “Locking Out” a weak signal of interest
(generally through 3rd order intermodulation product(s)).
• This is often referred to as the “near-far” problem.
26/05/2009
 Interference ....
• The third order intermodulation products are generally
recognized to be of greatest concern.
• Also, if the front end in question is driven into strong distortion, it
may lock out everything except the strongest input signal
entirely.
• The problem of relatively low frequency interference is still
further challenging since, as can be observed in the range
equation (Friis transmission formula)

Pr/Pt = (GrGt) λ2 /(4π r)2

• The relative dropoff of received power for a given transmitted

power and distance is more gradual at low frequencies than at
high frequencies (due to the larger λ).
• For example, an FRS walkie-talkie (operating at roughly 460
MHz in the U.S.) will have roughly 14.7 dB of received power
advantage over an 802.11 signal (roughly 2.5 GHz) at 1 km
distance from the transmitter (assuming equal transmitted
power).
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 Approaches For Combatting Distortion
in Wideband Front End Amplifier
1
• Multiplex Narrowband Amplifiers -
The total required frequency spectrum
is divided into narrower “band” and
each band is handled by a separate
amplifier. The cluster of amplifiers is
coupled together through a multiplexer.
--- Construction of wideband
multiplexer is challenging
2
Tunable Narrow Bandwidth
Amplifiers -
A passive LC network is tuned so
that the response is optimized to
pass the desired input frequency
while attenuating others
--LNA and its required matching
are affected by Fano´s limit

Adaptive Interference Cancellation -

To cancel out the strongest few signals that are
the primary dynamic range “hogs”.
3 By adaptive filtering or by rejective NBI

Source - Ron Hickling et all, “Design consideration for the front end frequency agile SDR Rxr”,
26/05/2009 Proceeding Technical Conference SDR 05
 Wideband Frequency
Combatting Frequency Tuning

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Source - A Abidi, ISSCC Girafe 2006
 Effect on LNA/Mixer

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Source - A Abidi, ISSCC Girafe 2006
 Wideband LNA

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Source - A Abidi, ISSCC Girafe 2006
 Discrete-Time Receivers for
Software-Defined Radio*
• Author in this paper proposes a Discreter-Time (D-T)
receiver which has already been demonstrated for
Bluetooth, GSM, GPRS, and WLAN.

• A D-T receivers can be categorized based on their track

and hold (T/H) structures as charge sampling [1, 2] or
voltage sampling [3].
*Source - Zhiyu Ru et all, “On the Suitability of Discrete-Time Receivers for Software-Defined
Radio”, Circuits and Systems, 2007. ISCAS 2007. IEEE International Symposium.
26/05/2009
 Discrete-Time Receivers for
Software-Defined Radio ....
• The main difference is that, charge sampling
integrates current and samples charge, while
voltage sampling samples voltage.
• Voltage sampling often seriously suffers from
noise-and-interference aliasing, and the
suppression of the alias bands heavily relies on
the RF preselect filter.
• On the other hand, due to the integration effect
of charge sampling, there is a SINC transfer
function on the input spectrum, attenuating the
aliasing [4].
26/05/2009
 A CMOS 100 MHz to 6 GHz SDR Analog
Front-End+
• Author in a recent paper proposed a CMOS based
extensive programmable LO generator, LNA, mixers,
baseband filters and PPA, which suppors various
wireless communication standards while guaranteeing a
near-optimal power/performance trade-off at any time.

+Source - M. Ingels et all, “A CMOS 100 MHz to 6 GHz Software Defined Radio analog front-end with
integrated Pre-Power Amplifier”, 33rd European Solid State Circuits Conference, 2007. ESSCIRC.
26/05/2009
 A CMOS 100 MHz to 6 GHz SDR
Analog Front-End ....
• It provides the LO through 2 wide tuning
range VCOs and integrated DMQs.
• The front-end also includes a versatile RX
and TX path with programmability to
address the various functional
requirements of many different standards
while guaranteeing an optimal power
performance trade-off.

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Attenuation of Adjacent Channel
• Signal in the adjacent channel causes
interference to the desired signal.
• The most computationally intensive part of the
wideband receiver of an SDR is the channelizer
since it operates at the highest sampling rate.
• Higher order FIR channel filters are needed in
the channelizer to meet the stringent adjacent
channel attenuation specifications of wireless
communications standards.
• In this paper, authors presented a coefficient-
partitioning algorithm for realizing low power and
high-speed channel filters.
Source - A. P. Vinod et all, “IMPLEMENTATION OF LOW POWER AND HIGH-SPEED HIGHER ORDER CHANNEL
FILTERS FOR SOFTWARE RADIO RECEIVERS”, 17th Annual IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and
Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC’06).
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 Attenuation of Adjacent Channel....
• Authors in above paper proposed a coefficient-
Partitioning technique for implementing low power
channel filters.
• The key idea in this approach is to reduce the ranges of
the operands so that the adder width can be reduced
which in turn minimizes the number of FAs.
• By encoding the filter coefficients using the pseudo
floating-point (PFP) arithmetic scheme, the ranges of the
operands can be reduced considerably.
• Further, a coefficient-partitioning algorithm is employed,
which offers substantial reduction of FAs in implementing
the PFP coded coefficient multiplier when combined with
the Common Subexpression Elimination (CSE)[5,6]
method.

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 Adjacent Channel Interference ....
• Author in this paper proposed an adjacent
channel interference (ACI) cancellation scheme
with undersampling for multi-channel reception.
• Low-IF receiver architecture is used in the multi-
channel reception scheme.
• The ACI cancellation scheme with analog filter
bank has been proposed to mitigate the
influence from the adjacent channel.
• Undersampling technique is applied in this
system in order to lower the required sampling
frequency and power consumption.

Source - Anas M BOSTAMAM, Yukitoshi S, “Experimental Investigation of Undersampling for Adjacent Channel
Interference Cancellation Scheme”, IEICE Transactions on Communications 2006 E89-B(9):2548-2554.
26/05/2009
 Concluding Remarks
• Maintaining linearity in receivers is one of the key
challenges in light of potentially unpredictable levels of
interference.
• While inband interference is generally considered in
evaluating the performance of conventional receivers,
wideband receivers must also take into account the
effects of outband interference.
• The development of wideband front end receivers is a
key to achieving frequency agility and realizing the
ultimate goal of ideal software definable radio (SDR)
receivers.
• In this review paper, some of the problems of
interference in SDR along with some proposed solution
are discussed.
• Visited state of art will provide useful information to find
out more details in this field.
26/05/2009
 Further Reading and References...
• [1] K. Muhammad et. al., “A discrete-time Bluetooth receiver in a
0.13um digital CMOS process”, IEEE Int. Solid-State Circuits Conf.
(ISSCC) Dig. Tech. Papers, pp. 268-269, Feb. 2004.
• [2] K. Muhammad et. al., “A discrete time quad-band GSM/GPRS
receiver in a 90nm digital CMOS process”, Proc. IEEE Custom
Integrated Circuits Conf. (CICC), pp. 809-812, Sept. 2005.
• [3] D. Jakonis, K. Folkesson, J. Dabrowski, P. Eriksson, and C.
Svensson, “A 2.4-GHz RF sampling receiver front-end in 0.18-um
CMOS”, IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits, vol. 40, no. 6, Jun. 2005.
• [4] G. Xu and J. Yuan, “Performance analysis of general charge
sampling”, IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. II, vol. 52, no. 2, Feb. 2005.
• [5] R. I. Hartley, “Subexpression sharing in filters using canonic signed
digit multipliers,” IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. II, vol. 43, pp. 677-688,
Oct. 1996.
• [6] M. M. Peiro, E. I. Boemo, and L. anhammar, “Design of highspeed
multiplierless filters using a nonrecursive signed common
subexpression algorithm,” IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. II, vol. 49, no. 3,
pp. 196-203, March 2002.

26/05/2009
 Thank You !!!!

kumar@av.it.pt

26/05/2009