Design considerations for the multiband OFDM physical layer in consumer electronic products

The creation of Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPANs) offers the Consumer Electronics industry a mechanism to truly unwire consumer products, leading to portability and ease of installation as never seen before. WPAN's can offer data-rates exceeding those that are required to convey high quality broadcast video, thus users can easily connect to high quality video for multimedia presentations in education, libraries, advertising, or have a wireless connection at home. There have been many WPAN proposals, but this paper concentrates on ECMA-368 as this standard has the largest industrial and implementers' forum backing. This paper discusses the technology behind ECMA-368, the required numerical bandwidth, buffer memory requirements and implementation considerations while concentrating on supporting all the offered data-rates'.

An efficient low power FFT implementation for multiband full-rate ultra-wideband (UWB) receivers

This paper discusses the design, implementation and synthesis of an FFT module that has been specifically optimized for use in the OFDM based Multiband UWB system, although the work is generally applicable to many other OFDM based receiver systems. Previous work has detailed the requirements for the receiver FFT module within the Multiband UWB ODFM based system and this paper draws on those requirements coupled with modern digital architecture principles and low power design criteria to converge on our optimized solution. The FFT design obtained in this paper is also applicable for implementation of the transmitter IFFT module therefore only needing one FFT module for half-duplex operation. The results from this paper enable the baseband designers of the 200Mbit/sec variant of Multiband UWB systems (and indeed other OFDM based receivers) using System-on-Chip (SoC), FPGA and ASIC technology to create cost effective and low power solutions biased toward the competitive consumer electronics market.

Offering 802.11 MAC frame transport over multiband OFDM for consumer devices

A method to map all the variants of the IEEE 802.11 MAC frames into the Multiband OFDM based ECMA-368 Physical standard is proposed, without contravening the standard. The transportation of IEEE 802.11 MAC frames over ECMA-368 allows for the migration current of Wireless LAN applications towards a Wireless Personal Area Network (WPAN) solution. This system benefits the Consumer Electronics Market as the high data-rate WPAN is capable of transporting broadcast-quality video while the same system can also transport existing applications available today, maintaining existing effort, products and backward-compatibility(1).

Soft-bit and numerical precision requirements on multiband full-rate ultra-wideband (UWB) receivers

This paper discusses the architectural design, implementation and associated simulated peformance results of a possible receiver solution fir a multiband Ultra-Wideband (UWB) receiver. The paper concentrates on the tradeoff between the soft-bit width and numerical precision requirements for the receiver versus performance. The required numerical precision results obtained in this paper can be used by baseband designers of cost effective UWB systems using Systein-on-Chip (SoC), FPGA and ASIC technology solutions biased toward the competitive consumer electronics market(1).

Micromachined waveguide antennas for 1.6 THz

A new type of horn antenna for operation at 1.6 THz, that can be fabricated monolithically with 1/4-height micromachined waveguide, is described. Height, limitations imposed by the micromachining process are overcome by removing a tapered slot in the upper surface of a scalar horn, allowing the E-plane fields to extend outside the confines of the metallic structure before radiation, with a consequent reduction in E-plane beamwidth. 1.6 THz radiation pattern measurements for different designs show that, while there is scope for further optimisation, 3 dB beamwidths of 24 degrees and 17.5 degrees in the E- and H-planes, respectively, can be achieved.

Design issues toward a cost effective physical layer for multiband OFDM (ECMA-368) in consumer products

The creation of Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPANs) offers the Consumer Electronics industry a mechanism to truly unwire consumer products, leading to portability and ease of installation as never seen before. WPAN's can offer data-rates exceeding those that are required to convey high quality broadcast video, thus users can easily connect to high quality video for multimedia presentations in education, libraries, advertising, or have a wireless connection at home. There have been many WPAN proposals, but this paper concentrates on ECMA-368 as this standard has the largest industrial and implementers' forum backing. With the aim to effective consumer electronic define and create cost equipment this paper discusses the technology behind ECMA-368 physical layer, the design freedom availabilities, the required processing, buffer memory requirements and implementation considerations while concentrating on supporting all the offered data-rates(1).

A low clock frequency FFT core implementation for multiband full-rate ultra-wideband (UWB) receivers

This paper discusses the design, implementation and synthesis of an FFT module that has been specifically optimized for use in the OFDM based Multiband UWB system, although the work is generally applicable to many other OFDM based receiver systems. Previous work has detailed the requirements for the receiver FFT module within the Multiband UWB ODFM based system and this paper draws on those requirements coupled with modern digital architecture principles and low power design criteria to converge on our optimized solution particularly aimed at a low-clock rate implementation. The FFT design obtained in this paper is also applicable for implementation of the transmitter IFFT module therefore only needing one FFT module in the device for half-duplex operation. The results from this paper enable the baseband designers of the 200Mbit/sec variant of Multiband UWB systems (and indeed other OFDM based receivers) using System-on-Chip (SoC), FPGA and ASIC technology to create cost effective and low power consumer electronics product solutions biased toward the very competitive market.

Numerical precision requirements on the Multiband Ultra-Wideband system for practical consumer electronic devices

This paper discusses the requirements on the numerical precision for a practical Multiband Ultra-Wideband (UWB) consumer electronic solution. To this end we first present the possibilities that UWB has to offer to the consumer electronics market and the possible range of devices. We then show the performance of a model of the UWB baseband system implemented using floating point precision. Then, by simulation we find the minimal numerical precision required to maintain floating-point performance for each of the specific data types and signals present in the UWB baseband. Finally, we present a full description of the numerical requirements for both the transmit and receive components of the UWB baseband. The numerical precision results obtained in this paper can then be used by baseband designers to implement cost effective UWB systems using System-on-Chip (SoC), FPGA and ASIC technology solutions biased toward the competitive consumer electronics market(1).

A dual QPSK soft-demapper for multiband OFDM exploiting time-domain spreading and guard interval diversity

When considering the relative fast processing speeds and low power requirements for Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPAN) including Wireless Universal Serial Bus (WUSB) consumer based products, then the efficiency and cost effectiveness of these products become paramount. This paper presents an improved soft-output QPSK demapper suitable for the products above that not only exploits time diversity and guard carrier diversity, but also merges the demapping and symbol combining functions together to minimize CPU cycles, or memory access dependant upon the chosen implementation architecture. The proposed demapper is presented in the context of Multiband OFDM version of Ultra Wideband (UWB) (ECMA-368) as the chosen physical implementation for high-rate Wireless US8(1).

A robust non-orthogonal space-time block code for four transmit antennas

Several non-orthogonal space-time block coding (NO-STBC) schemes have recently been proposed to achieve full rate transmission. Some of these schemes, however, suffer from weak robustness: their channel matrices will become ill conditioned in the case of highly correlated channels (HCC). To address this issue, this paper derives a family of robust NO-STBC schemes for four Tx antennas based on the worst case of HCC. These codes turned out to be a superset of Jafarkhani's quasi-orthogonal STBC codes. A computationally affordable linear decoder is also proposed. Although these codes achieve a similar performance to the non-robust schemes under normal channel conditions, they offer a strong robustness against HCC (although possibly yielding a poorer performance). Finally, computer simulations are presented to verify the algorithm design.

Space-time block coding for four transmit antennas over time-selective fading channels: orthogonal or non-orthogonal design?

The paper deals with an issue in space time block coding (STBC) design. It considers whether, over a time-selective channel, orthogonal STBC (O-STBC) or non-orthogonal STBC (NO-STBC) performs better. It is shown that, under time-selectiveness, once vehicle speed has risen above a certain value, NO-STBC always outperforms O-STBC across the whole SNR range. Also, considering that all existing NO-STBC schemes have been investigated under quasi-static channels only, a new simple receiver is derived for the NO-STBC system under time-selective channels.

Astigmatism in tapered slot antennas

A series of scale model measurements of transverse electromagnetic mode tapered slot antennas are presented. They show that the beam launched by this type of antenna is astigmatic. It is shown how an off-axis spherical mirror can be used to correct this astigmatism to allow efficient coupling to quasi-optical systems. A millimetre wave antenna and mirror combination is described and, with the aid of solid state noise diodes, the coupling of the launched beam to a quasi-optical spectrometer is shown to be in good agreement with that predicted by the scale model measurements.

Multiband OFDM modulation and demodulation for ultra wideband communications

This chapter considers the Multiband Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (MB- OFDM) modulation and demodulation with the intention to optimize the Ultra-Wideband (UWB) system performance. OFDM is a type of multicarrier modulation and becomes the most important aspect for the MB-OFDM system performance. It is also a low cost digital signal component efficiently using Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) algorithm to implement the multicarrier orthogonality. Within the MB-OFDM approach, the OFDM modulation is employed in each 528 MHz wide band to transmit the data across the different bands while also using the frequency hopping technique across different bands. Each parallel bit stream can be mapped onto one of the OFDM subcarriers. Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK) and Dual Carrier Modulation (DCM) are currently used as the modulation schemes for MB-OFDM in the ECMA-368 defined UWB radio platform. A dual QPSK soft-demapper is suitable for ECMA-368 that exploits the inherent Time-Domain Spreading (TDS) and guard symbol subcarrier diversity to improve the receiver performance, yet merges decoding operations together to minimize hardware and power requirements. There are several methods to demap the DCM, which are soft bit demapping, Maximum Likelihood (ML) soft bit demapping, and Log Likelihood Ratio (LLR) demapping. The Channel State Information (CSI) aided scheme coupled with the band hopping information is used as a further technique to improve the DCM demapping performance. ECMA-368 offers up to 480 Mb/s instantaneous bit rate to the Medium Access Control (MAC) layer, but depending on radio channel conditions dropped packets unfortunately result in a lower throughput. An alternative high data rate modulation scheme termed Dual Circular 32-QAM that fits within the configuration of the current standard increasing system throughput thus maintaining the high rate throughput even with a moderate level of dropped packets.