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High-Level Analysis of Fully Digital PWM Transmitters

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Book cover Continuous-Time Digital Front-Ends for Multistandard Wireless Transmission

Part of the book series: Analog Circuits and Signal Processing ((ACSP))

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Abstract

Digital transmitters approximate the ideal analog signals by digital signals, which introduces many nonidealities. On one hand, this results in noise and distortion in the signal band, which deteriorates the signal quality. On the other hand, it results in distortion peaks outside the signal band, which may interfere with signals in different communication bands. Both in-band and out-of-band nonidealities are governed by fairly complex effects that depend on a number of parameters. Understanding these effects is crucial in order to efficiently explore the design space and implement performant transmitter architectures. In order to speed up the design process, it would be practical if these nonidealities can not only be understood but also predicted. For certain effects, this can be done using analytical approximations. For other, more complex effects, simulations are still needed. This chapter gives a theoretical high-level analysis of the nonidealities that occur in different types of digital PWM-based transmitters and their effects on the output spectrum.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The derivations in both [15] and [5] assume a sampling rate \(T_s\) and a pulse width \(T \le T_s \) for each sample. The sample-and-hold operation considered here holds each sampled value for a complete sampling period, so that in this work, \(T = T_s \).

  2. 2.

    In [14], the expressions are written in terms of \(a(t)\) and \(y(t)\), which are defined as \((b(t)+ 1)/2\) and \((b_\mathrm{{NDP}}(t)+ 1)/2\), respectively.

  3. 3.

    The PA is often not reconfigurable either, but it mostly has a much higher bandwidth so it can cover a major part of the frequency range of the digital transmitter. This wideband nature is exactly the reason why an extra band pass filter is required.

  4. 4.

    In practical implementations, \(f_c \) cannot be optimized since it is fixed by the standard. The word “optimal” just indicates the frequency where the best EVM can be achieved.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tri ICT, Zaventem, Belgium

    Pieter A. J. Nuyts

  2. ESAT-MICAS, KU Leuven, Leuvan, Belgium

    Pieter A. J. Nuyts, Patrick Reynaert & Wim Dehaene

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  1. Pieter A. J. Nuyts
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Correspondence to Pieter A. J. Nuyts .

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Nuyts, P.A.J., Reynaert, P., Dehaene, W. (2014). High-Level Analysis of Fully Digital PWM Transmitters. In: Continuous-Time Digital Front-Ends for Multistandard Wireless Transmission. Analog Circuits and Signal Processing. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03925-1_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03925-1_3

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