Adaptive compensation for imbalance and offset losses in direct conversion transceivers

Abstract

It is pointed out that analog implementations of quadrature modulators and demodulators have deficiencies-primarily amplitude and phase imbalances and DC offset-that result in several troublesome problems for digital transceivers. An analysis and quantitative assessment of the losses due to analog implementations are presented. They include spurious tones and intermodulation products at the transmitter and a degraded BER (bit error rate) due to distortion of the signal constellation. The asymptotic degradation in BER performance in 16 QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation) for example is shown to be 1.1 dB for a 5 degrees phase imbalance and 0.65 dB for 5% gain imbalance. An adaptive procedure at the receiver for minimization of the imbalance and offset errors is developed. It is demonstrated that the LMS (least mean square) algorithm can be used to adapt the compensator in a manner similar to an equalizer, and that the computational load is the same as that of a three-tap equalizer.