A Novel Quadrature-Tracking Demodulator for LTE-A Applications

Abstract EN

This work develops an advanced quadrature-tracking demodulation technique for coherently demodulating the orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) signal of LTE-A systems.

To overcome the fact that traditional coherent demodulators are extremely sensitive to the quadrature imbalance of a system, especially an OFDM system, the proposed architecture uses a novel quadrature phase-locked loop (QPLL) to track simultaneously the in phase (I-phase) and the quadrature phase (Q-phase) of the received signal.

This advanced quadrature-tracking demodulator is realized using TSMC 0.18 μm CMOS technology and hybrid circuits.

Experimental results indicate that the developed quadrature-tracking demodulator, which operates at 2.1~2.5 GHz, can effectively demodulate an 18 Mbps LTE-A signal, even with a 15 degree quadrature imbalance.