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Demo: An RFSoC-Based Testbed for Over-the-Air Wireless Transceiver at Millimeter Wave Frequency

Jeet Tekchandani, Jai Mangal, Sumit J. Darak, Shobha Sundar Ram

TL;DR

This work presents an AMD RFSoC and Sivers Semiconductors analog front-end based hardware testbed capable of directional communication via analog beamforming at mmW and demonstrates end-to-end communication over the air and presents bit error rate (BER) analysis in the presence of radio frequency impairments and beam misalignments in real radio channels.

Abstract

The millimeter wave (mmW) frequency spectrum has been explored recently for large bandwidth communication. At these frequencies, narrow directional beams are required for communication since the signal attenuation is high due to atmospheric absorption. This work presents an AMD RFSoC and Sivers Semiconductors analog front-end based hardware testbed capable of directional communication via analog beamforming at mmW. The proposed testbed comprises orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) based baseband physical layer and digital front-end on an ARM processor and field programmable gate array (FPGA), respectively, integrated with high-speed data converters of the RFSoC. The RFSoC output at sub-6GHz is integrated with a mmW multi-antenna analog-front end for over- the-air communication at 29.8 GHz. We demonstrate end-to-end communication over the air and present bit error rate (BER) analysis in the presence of radio frequency impairments and beam misalignments in real radio channels.

Demo: An RFSoC-Based Testbed for Over-the-Air Wireless Transceiver at Millimeter Wave Frequency

TL;DR

This work presents an AMD RFSoC and Sivers Semiconductors analog front-end based hardware testbed capable of directional communication via analog beamforming at mmW and demonstrates end-to-end communication over the air and presents bit error rate (BER) analysis in the presence of radio frequency impairments and beam misalignments in real radio channels.

Abstract

The millimeter wave (mmW) frequency spectrum has been explored recently for large bandwidth communication. At these frequencies, narrow directional beams are required for communication since the signal attenuation is high due to atmospheric absorption. This work presents an AMD RFSoC and Sivers Semiconductors analog front-end based hardware testbed capable of directional communication via analog beamforming at mmW. The proposed testbed comprises orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) based baseband physical layer and digital front-end on an ARM processor and field programmable gate array (FPGA), respectively, integrated with high-speed data converters of the RFSoC. The RFSoC output at sub-6GHz is integrated with a mmW multi-antenna analog-front end for over- the-air communication at 29.8 GHz. We demonstrate end-to-end communication over the air and present bit error rate (BER) analysis in the presence of radio frequency impairments and beam misalignments in real radio channels.
Paper Structure (4 sections, 8 figures)

This paper contains 4 sections, 8 figures.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Hardware Testbed
  3. Results & Discussions
  4. Conclusion & Future Work

Figures (8)

  • Figure 1: Hardware software co-design based baseband and digital front-end architecture of the proposed testbed.
  • Figure 2: Transmitted OFDM signal (a) frame structure, (b) Baseband signal, (c) Digital front-end output, and (d) Input to DAC.
  • Figure 3: System level layout of the proposed testbed. The numbers within parentheses $()$ indicate (Power(dBm), Frequency(GHz)).
  • Figure 4: Real view of the proposed hardware testbed when (a) aligned, and (b) misaligned.
  • Figure 5: Received OFDM signal when Tx-Rx are aligned (a) matched filtered output, (b) packet detection
  • ...and 3 more figures