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A CALIBRATION SYSTEM AND PERTURBATION ANALYSIS FOR THE MODULATED

WIDEBAND CONVERTER

Laming Chen, Jian Jin, and Yuantao Gu∗

Department of Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua University,

Beijing 100084, CHINA.
Email: gyt@tsinghua.edu.cn

ABSTRACT the mixtures are low-pass filtered and sampled at a low rate sepa-
rately. Finally, all these digital samples are fed into a sparse signal
A calibration system is proposed in this paper for the Modulated reconstruction algorithm [5] to recover a Nyquist rate sampling se-
Wideband Converter (MWC), which is an efficient sampling system quence. The MWC is able to sample a multiband signal at a rate far
for the sparse multiband signals. The proposed calibration system lower than its Nyquist rate.
has the ability to acquire actual measurement matrix and is achiev-
able both in its structure and in its computational complexity. The
perturbation performance of the MWC is also analyzed, and it is p1 (t )
proved that under some rational assumptions, the relative error of t nTs
the multiband signal recovered by the MWC is limited by the noise x1 (t ) y1 (t ) y1[n]
H( f )
level in the observation and the extended singular value of the per-


turbation to the measurement matrix. pi (t )
lowpass
x (t ) xi (t ) yi (t ) t nTs y [n] Sparse signal x[n]
Index Terms— compressive sampling, modulated wideband H( f ) i
reconstruction
converter, multiband signal, measurement matrix, calibration sys- in DSP
pm (t ) 1 / 2Ts cutoff
tem, extended singular value, reconstruction error bound.

1. INTRODUCTION
The fast evolving technology of digital signal processing has driven
more and more applications with extreme bandwidth requirement.
However, due to the wide spectral range, those analog wideband sig-
nals can hardly be efficiently sampled because their Nyquist rates
may exceed the specifications of the best analog-to-digital convert-
ers (ADCs) by orders of magnitude. A compromising method is to
divide the spectral into multiple channels, which are demodulated to
baseband and sampled by a low-rate ADC sequentially, or multiple
low-rate ADCs respectively. Obviously, such implementations cost
too much time or too many devices, which are unacceptable in many
practical scenarios.
Recently, an innovative sub-Nyquist system called the Modu-
lated Wideband Converter (MWC) [1–3] is proposed for sampling
analog multiband signals of wide spectral range. Based on Compres-
sive Sampling (CS) technique [4], which makes it possible to acquire
adequate information of a sparse signal with limited measurements,
the essential idea underlying the MWC is that the frequency band
occupied by the multiband signal is sparse compared to its spectral
range. As depicted in Fig. 1, the MWC system is comprised of sev-
eral channels, where each channel is made of a modulator, a low-pass
filter and a low-rate ADC. Instead of sampling all bands separately,
the original signal enters several channels simultaneously; while in
each channel the signal is multiplied by a periodic waveform to en-
sure a portion of the energy of all bands appears in baseband. Then
This work was supported partially by the National Natural Science
Foundation of CHINA (60872087 and U0835003) and Agilent Technologies
Foundation # 2205. The corresponding author of this paper is Yuantao Gu
(gyt@tsinghua.edu.cn).
___________________________________
978-1-4244-5900-1/10/$26.00 ©2010 IEEE

xm (t ) ym (t ) t nTs y [n]
m
H( f )
Fig. 1. The structure of the modulated wideband converter.
Reconstruction of multiband signals requires the exact measure-
ment matrix, which is composed of the Fourier expansion coeffi-
cients of the different periodic waveforms. Based on the shapes of
the pulses, those coefficients can be calculated in theory. However,
considering the disturbances and noises in the practical implemen-
tation, the pulses generated by the pulse sources are not ideal, and
direct use of those theoretical coefficients will lead to unexpected
errors. Our work is mainly motivated by this problem.
In their original work [6], a direct but expensive solution is
adopted to solve this problem. The mixing pulses are measured
with a spectrum analyzer; then the matrix is obtained and fed to
the reconstruction algorithm. In this paper we develop a calibration
system to derive the actual measurement matrix of the MWC, and
the calibration system is easy implemented both in its structure and
in its computational complexity. Actually, the measurement matrix
is more or less perturbed despite of the method it is acquired. Utiliz-
ing the extended concept of the singular value, we prove that under
some rational assumptions, the relative error of the multiband signal
recovered by the MWC is bounded by a limited value.
The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 gives a brief in-
troduction to the MWC and the extended concept of singular value.
Section 3 provides the details of the proposed calibration system for
the MWC, and the perturbation analysis is conducted in section 4.
The work is concluded in section 5.

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 2. BACKGROUNDS {pi (t)}1≤i≤m . Derived from the fact that the input signal and
periodic waveforms are all real signals, an interesting result is that
To further explain the calibration system and perturbation analysis,
∗
in this section we briefly introduce the principle of the MWC and the zl [n] = z−l [n]
extended concept of singular value. ∗
ci,l = ci,−l , 1 ≤ i ≤ m

2.1. Modulated Wideband Converter
The MWC is an effective sampling system for sparse multiband sig-
nals. Assume the highest frequency of the input signal x(t) is limited
to fN /2, where fN denotes the Nyquist sampling rate. Though the
carrier frequencies are unknown, the components in x(t) is up to K
narrow-band signals, where the width of each band does not exceed
B Hz. x(t) is called a sparse multiband signal when the sum of
frequency bands occupied is much smaller than its Nyquist rate, or
equivalently, KB  fN . As shown in Fig. 1, the input signal enters
m channels simultaneously. In the ith channel, after multiplied by a
periodic waveform pi (t), the mixing signal x̃i (t) is low-pass filtered
with cut-off frequency 1/(2Ts ) and uniformly sampled by an ADC
at rate fs = 1/Ts . In systemic view, the overall sampling rate is
mfs , which is much smaller than fN . Further, the sampling task is
shared by m low-rate ADCs, which are easy to implement.
Considering the ith channel, the frequency spectrum of pi (t) can
be expressed by

+∞
Pi (f ) = ci,l δ(f − lfp ),
l=−∞
where fp and ci,l denote the repeating frequency and the Fourier
expansion coefficient of pi (t), respectively. Consequently, the spec-
trum of the mixing signal x̃i (t) = x(t)pi (t) is
where (·)∗ denotes conjugate. Such result will be used in the design
of the proposed calibration system.
Considering the sparse nature of x(t), the vector z[n] is also
sparse and contains 2K non-zero elements at most. Assume N
points are sampled in each channel, equation (4) can be expressed
by
Y = AZ (5)
where Y = [y[1], · · · , y[N ]] and Z = [z[1], · · · , z[N ]].
Equation (5) is called Multiple Measurement Vectors (MMV)
problem. As its name, the task of recovery algorithm is to recon-
struct the unknown multiband signal x(t) (or its discrete denotation
Z) from the measured data Y and the linear measurement matrix
A. ReMBo [5] is an effective algorithm solving this problem. After
finding the support S of the sparse signal Z, it can be easily calcu-
lated by
ZS = A†S Y
Zi = 0, i ∈/S
(1)
where ZS and AS are the submatrices comprised of the rows of Z
and A indexed by S, respectively, and Zi denotes the ith row of Z
and (·)† denotes the pseudo inverse. Finally Z is interpolated and
modulated to their central frequencies according to S to reconstruct
the Nyquist rate sampled signal x[n].


+∞
X̃i (f ) = ci,l X(f − lfp ), (2) 2.2. Extended Singular Value
l=−∞
It is known that the largest and the smallest singular values of an
m × L matrix A satisfy
where X(f ) denotes the spectrum of the input signal. After low-pass
filtered and sampled at rate fs , the discrete time Fourier transform
Ax2
(DTFT) of the output samples yi [n] is σmax (A) = max
x2
x∈RL

1 
+L0 Ax2
Yi (ej2πf Ts ) = ci,l X(f − lfp ) (3) σmin (A) = min
x∈RL x2
Ts
l=−L0
respectively. Considering sparsity is an important topic of this paper,
for f ∈ [−fs /2, fs /2], where L0 is the smallest integer satisfying (K) (K)
σmax (A) and σmin (A) is introduced as the largest and the small-
L = 2L0 + 1 ≥ (fN + fs − fp )/fp . Generally, fp is chosen slightly
est singular values taken over all K-column submatrices of A [7],
larger than B to encourage sparsity, and assumed equal to fs in the
which means the following inequality
following text for simplicity.
Define zl [n] as the samples of zl (t), whose spectrum is X(f + (K) (K)
σmin (A)x2 ≤ Ax2 ≤ σmax (A)x2 (6)
lfp ) for f ∈ [−fs /2, fs /2] and 0 for elsewhere. Equation (3) can
be transformed into time domain as
holds for all K-sparse vector x. Here K-sparse means x contains no
(K) (K)
+L0
 more than K nonzero elements. σmax (A) and σmin (A) are defined
yi [n] = ci,−l zl [n], as the extended singular values of A, respectively. According to the
l=−L0 definition, the following inference is drawn.
Inference 1: Assume A is an m × L matrix, and X is an L × N
and can be written in matrix form (K)
matrix with no more than K nonzero rows. Define σmax (A) and
(K)
y[n] = Az[n], (4) σmin (A) as the largest and the smallest extended singular values of
A, respectively. The following inequality holds
where y[n] = [y1 [n], · · · , ym [n]]T , z[n] = [z−L0 [n], · · · , zL0 [n]]T ,
(K) (K)
and Ai,l = ci,L0 +1−l where 1 ≤ i ≤ m and 1 ≤ l ≤ L. It can σmin (A)XF ≤ AXF ≤ σmax (A)XF (7)
be readily accepted that the measurement matrix A is only related
to the Fourier expansion coefficients of the periodic waveforms where  · F denotes the Frobenius norm.

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 Proof of Inference 1: Assume x[n] is the nth column of X. Considering ci,k = c∗i,−k , the following equation is obtained
Based on the definition of extended singular value and (6), The fol-
lowing inequality is drawn, Re{ci,−k } = yi [n]. (11)
 2  2
(K) Applying similar discussion to sin(k2πfs t) where 1 ≤ k ≤ L0
σmin (A) x[n]22 ≤ Ax[n]22 ≤ σmax (K)
(A) x[n]22 .
and it is obtained
(8) 
Varying n from 1 to N and summing all of the inequalities, inequal- 1 j l = ∓k;
±2
ity (7) of Inference 1 is obtained. zl [n] = (12)
0 elsewhere;

and the samples in the ith channel at the output is

3. THE PROPOSED CALIBRATION SYSTEM
According to the review, the pulse waveforms in MWC must be ex-
actly identical as designed in order to match the measurement matrix
A used in recovery algorithm. Based on the analysis in [1], pi (t) is
binary signal and each pulse is overturned at a rate as high as fN .
However, it is difficult to design a pulse source that generates rather
high-frequency transient and stable signal. Therefore in their orig-
inal work [6], an additional sampling system is adopted to capture
the spectrums of pi (t) and feed it to the reconstruction block as a
parameter. Obviously, this is a very expensive solution.
In this section, a novel solution is proposed and a calibration
system is designed to estimate the actual measurement matrix. As
one will see, we neither suggest rigorous demand on pulse genera-
tor, nor utilize expensive spectrum capture devices. Next it will be
demonstrated how the calibration system works.
Modulation
sequences generator
j
yi [n] = (ci,k − ci,−k ) (13)
2
which means
Im{ci,−k } = yi [n]. (14)
Please notice that {ci,0 }1≤i≤m are real values and can be di-
rectly obtained from (11). Therefore with (11) and (14), varying the
training signal’s frequency and capturing all low-rate digital sam-
ples, the exact elements in the actual measurement matrix A can be
readily calculated.
The proposed solution has several advantages. First, the struc-
ture of the system is simple and the utilized device is easy to prepare.
Second, the calibration procedure is direct, and the result can be
more accurate after the multiple training results are averaged. Third,
since the system is simplified into (5), most details of the realiza-
tion of the MWC are ignored. As long as (5) holds, the proposed
calibration system is effective regardless of undesirable factors.

4. PERTURBATION ANALYSIS

Synchronous p1(t) In this section a fundamental analysis on the error bound of the
pulse generator
MWC is provided. Considering the difficulties in practice, the fac-
y1[n] tors such as the thermal noise and the quantitative effect of ADCs
Lowpass may introduce disturbances into the measurement. The upper bound
t = nTs
f k 2S f s of the reconstruction error will be derived with the universal model,
pm(t) Y + e = (A + E)Z∗ (15)
Frequency
adjustable ym[n] where E and e denote the small perturbations to matrix A and the
Lowpass
oscillator
t = nTs samples Y, respectively, which are introduced in the procedure of
calibration as well as observation. In [8–10], the perturbation to the
measurement matrix is omitted, while in [7] the perturbation analysis
Fig. 2. The structure of the proposed calibration system.
is conducted for the Basis Pursuit (BP) problem, which differs from
the problem considered here.
The sparse Least Square solution of the corrupt system (15) is
The structure of the proposed calibration system is depicted in
denoted by Z∗ , the support of which is exactly identical as that of Z.
Fig. 2. A frequency adjustable oscillator is introduced to generate
Such assumption is acceptable considering the perturbations not too
some single frequency signals with f = k2πfs , where 1 ≤ k ≤ L0 .
large. The following theorem gives the upper bound of the relative
Synchronous pulse generator here is to synchronize the modulation
error in this situation.
sequences generator and the ADCs so that the input signals are sines
Theorem 1: Assume Z is the 2K-sparse solution to Y = AZ
or cosines for them. When the training signal is cos(k2πfs t) where
and Z∗ is the sparse Least Squared solution to Y + e = (A + E)Z∗
0 ≤ k ≤ L0 , the spectrum of the input is [δ(f − kfs ) + δ(f + (2K) (2K)
kfs )]/2, which means that with the right support S. Assume σmax (A) and σmin (A) are the
(2K)
 largest and smallest extended singular values of A and σmax (E) is
1 l = ±k; the largest extended singular value of E satisfying
zl [n] = 2 (9)
0 elsewhere. (2K) (2K)
σmax (E) < σmin (A). (16)
After the MWC processes the mixing signal, the samples in the ith
channel at the output is Then the relative error of the reconstruction solution is bounded by

1 Z − Z∗ F eF
yi [n] = (ci,k + ci,−k ). (10) ≤ C0 + C1 , (17)
2 ZF YF

80
 (2K)
where Especially, as σmax (E) approaches the smallest extended
(2K)
singular value of A, the reconstruction error increases arbi-
σmax (E) trarily. Also it needs to be emphasized that assumption (16)
C0 = (2K) (2K)
(18)
σmin (A) − σmax (E) plays an important role in the theorem. Such assumption im-
(2K) plies that the perturbation can not be so large to change the
σmax (A)
C1 = (2K) (2K)
(19) essence of the measurement matrix.
σmin (A) − σmax (E) • The assumption (16) is rational because it implies that [7]
Proof of Theorem 1: From the fact that Y = AZ and Y + e = rank(2K) (A + E) = rank(2K) (A) (29)
(A + E)Z∗ , the reconstruction error obeys
(K)
where rank (A) means the smallest rank taken over all
A(Z − Z∗ ) = EZ∗ − e. (20) K-column submatrices of A.
Since Z∗ holds the right support S, it is known that Z − Z∗ also has
2K nonzero rows at most. Inference 1 gives 5. CONCLUSION
(2K)
σmin (A)Z − Z∗ F ≤ EZ∗ − eF . (21) In this paper, the impact of practical pulse waveforms applied in the
MWC is investigated, and a calibration system is proposed to obtain
Utilizing the triangle inequality it is followed from (21) that the actual measurement matrix A. The structure of the proposed
 2 Z − Z 2 calibration system is simple, and the computational complexity is
(2K) ∗ F (EZ∗ F + eF )2 low. It is also proved that when the perturbations to the measure-
σmin (A) 2
≤ . (22)
ZF Z2F ment matrix and the observation results are taken into consideration,
the relative error of the multiband signal recovered by the MWC is
Again triangle inequality confirms bounded by a limited value, which is related to noise-to-signal ratio
Z∗ F ZF + Z − Z∗ F Z − Z∗ F as well as extended singular values of A and its perturbation.
≤ =1+ (23)
ZF ZF ZF
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