Radio Systems: RF Transceiver Design from Antenna to Bits and Back Part 1 of 5
Course 308
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Summary
This is part 1 of 5 for the classroom recording of Course 241. These parts are intended to be taken sequentially.
Over the past two decades, there has been a significant increase in the complexity of RF technology to meet the growing demand for fixed and mobile communication systems. Moving forward, we expect this trend to continue with emerging cellular and wireless standards employing complex modulation schemes and occupying higher bandwidth while emphasizing stringent spectrum efficiency requirements. These advances call for employing sophisticated design principles at both the circuit and system levels and hence the need for a comprehensive understanding of the radio modem.
This course is intended for design, application and test engineers as well as technicians interested in learning about the system aspect of the radio design space covering the entire signal chain from antenna to bits and back. The aim is to apply intuitive system design methods to dissect the radio modem at RF, analog and digital domains with emphasis on: a) physical understanding of the interaction between components and different radio architectures and b) quantitative performance evaluation using simple hand calculations and simulation. Throughout the course, students will be exposed not only to theoretical analysis but also to concrete examples of radio architectures from existing commercial systems (LTE, WCDMA, GSM, WLAN, Bluetooth, etc.). Emerging technologies of interest to the wireless industry such LTE and 5G will also be elucidated in the context of their impact on radio design. The instructor will present various examples using a commercial system design tool to analyze transmitter and receiver end-to-end system metrics such as bit error rate (BER), error vector magnitude (EVM), phase noise, spectrum emission, etc.
The recording of Dr. Khalil's latest live classroom presentation is now available on-demand to support students that are unable to attend in-person. Please contact our office for details at: info@besserassociates.com.
Learning objectives
Upon completing the course you will be able to:
- Gain in-depth understanding of the different block-level specifications and impairments (e.g. noise, P1dB, IIP3, IIP2, gain, bandwidth, phase noise and spurs) and how to relate them to system level performance metrics (e.g. BER, EVM, modulation type, blocker performance, sensitivity and selectivity)
- Traverse between block level specifications and overall system performance and backwards
- Analyze and abstract (at block level) the most critical blocks in today’s RF modem (e.g. low noise amplifier, mixer, voltage-controlled oscillator, power amplifier and analog and digital baseband circuits such A/Ds, D/As and filters).
- Evaluate the impact of different impairments in radio front-ends on performance, including interference, different noise sources, circuit nonlinearity and phase noise.
- Understand the trade-offs between block-level performance, choice of radio architecture and overall system performance (e.g. power, area and cost) in relation to a given communication standard
- Learn the major aspects of the digital signal processing chain at both the modulation and demodulation ends
- Use simple back-of-the-envelope calculations and understanding of path loss and fading to predict RF system’s performance in terms of link budget and link margin.
- Evaluate thru simulation (at block level) various modem design aspects involving RF, analog and digital impairments.
- Traverse across legacy wireless standards (e.g. BT, WiFi, GSM,..) and emerging LTE, 5G, MIMO standards and tie back to the impact on radio hardware.
- Tie between system level performance parameters and test equipment specifications
- >More…
Target Audience
RF and baseband IC engineers, system architects, test engineers, product engineers and technicians. Technical managers who would like to get exposure to RF system technology.