Impact of Major RF Impairments on mm-Wave Communications Using OFDM Waveforms

TitleImpact of Major RF Impairments on mm-Wave Communications Using OFDM Waveforms
Publication TypeConference Paper
Year of Publication2016
AuthorsZou, Y., Zetterberg P., Gustavsson U., Svensson T., Zaidi A., Kadur T., Rave WW., & Fettweis G.
Published in2016 IEEE Globecom Workshops (GC Wkshps)
Page(s)1-7
Date Published12/2016
Keywordschannel estimation, Frequency-domain analysis, OFDM, Phase noise, Power amplifiers, Radio frequency, Transceivers
Abstract

In this paper, we study the joint impact of three major RF im-pairments, namely, oscillator phase noise, power amplifier non-linearity and I/Q imbalance on the performance of a mm-wave communication link based on OFDM modulation. General im-pairment models are first derived for describing the joint effects in each TX, each RX as well as a mm-wave communication link. Based on the obtained signal models and initial air interface de-sign from the mmMAGIC project, we numerically evaluate the impact of RF impairments on channel estimation in terms of channel-to-noise ratio (CNR) and also channel fluctuation due to common phase error (CPE) caused by phase noise within the channel coherence time. Then the impact on the link performance in terms of maximum sum rate is evaluated using extensive com-puter simulations. The simulation results show that the used air interface design is generally robust to the presence of RF impair-ments. With regard to the use of high order modulation alphabet and implementation of low-power and low-cost RF transceivers in mm-wave communication, special attention needs to be paid on phase noise where the inter-carrier-interference (ICI) can become a major limiting factor.

Acknowledgment

The research leading to these results received funding from the European Commission H2020 programme under grant agreement n°671650 (5G PPP mmMAGIC project).

URLhttp://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/pubs/initiatives/impactofmajorRFimpairments16.pdf
DOI10.1109/GLOCOMW.2016.7848927
ICSI Research Group

Research Initatives