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A Linear, Wide-band, Low-Power Receiver for Narrowband- Internet of Things (NB-IoT)

Raghunath, Rohan LU and Prabhu, Ghanashyam Ravindranath LU (2018) EITM02 20172
Department of Electrical and Information Technology
Abstract
Advancement of technology with the aid of new application, wireless communication has grown rapidly in the past two decades. Recently, in the wireless communication industry, Narrowband- Internet of Things (NB-IoT) is being discussed by everyone, as the most important emerging technology of the day. Being a wireless technology, owing to the exodus of devices to be connected, with due consideration to the data transfer requirements, and spectrum allowances, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) have standardized the technology with a list of specifications. In this thesis, a comprehensive study is conducted to find the most promising receiver front end architectures for an NB-IoT User Equipment (UE) which is highly integrable, has... (More)
Advancement of technology with the aid of new application, wireless communication has grown rapidly in the past two decades. Recently, in the wireless communication industry, Narrowband- Internet of Things (NB-IoT) is being discussed by everyone, as the most important emerging technology of the day. Being a wireless technology, owing to the exodus of devices to be connected, with due consideration to the data transfer requirements, and spectrum allowances, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) have standardized the technology with a list of specifications. In this thesis, a comprehensive study is conducted to find the most promising receiver front end architectures for an NB-IoT User Equipment (UE) which is highly integrable, has the least DC power consumption at its best performance and has the least price per unit.

For NB-IoT, the 3GPP standard mandates the requirement of a receiver front end to be capable of tuning to signals within the frequency range 450MHz to 2200MHz, thus necessitating it to wide-band reception with better selectivity. By emphasizing upon the reduction of price per device demands, comparing the characteristic trade-offs of the various architectures, analysis of the typical receiver’s non-ideal factors and considering the specifications and requirements, an inductor-less, external Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) filter-less Direct Conversion Receiver (DCR) has been chosen as the potential candidate.

The study reveals that the Frequency Translational Noise Canceling (FTNC) receiver front end and gain switching receiver front end stand as the most promising receiver topologies. The former, with its two modes of operation, saves DC power, displays a decent linearity performance and a relaxed trade-off between noise figure and linearity; while the latter has the advantage of variable gain control at RF which supports lower DC power consumption in the presence of large wanted signal without compromising largely on noise figure. The simulated DC power consumption for each of the architectures have a maximum of 40mW at their best performance with DSB noise figure ≈ 2dB, impedance matching <-15dB, <-70dBm spurious emission from LO divider circuits, and 3rd order harmonic rejection >40dB. The study is conducted in 40nm CMOS technology. (Less)
Popular Abstract
Internet of Things (IoT) is a network constituted by uniquely identifiable material objects or devices equipped with some kind of physical sensing system. IoT standard enables the objects, otherwise called things, for sensing, which subsequently inter-operate and communicate with other objects for data and information exchange through an existing physical network infrastructure. Therefore, IoT promotes a seamless connection between the smart devices, which scatter everywhere around us, and the physical world to ensure full automation that eventually improves human lifestyle. Some examples of IoT-enabled material devices include heart monitoring implants, automobiles with embedded sensors, firefighter devices, smart thermostat systems, and... (More)
Internet of Things (IoT) is a network constituted by uniquely identifiable material objects or devices equipped with some kind of physical sensing system. IoT standard enables the objects, otherwise called things, for sensing, which subsequently inter-operate and communicate with other objects for data and information exchange through an existing physical network infrastructure. Therefore, IoT promotes a seamless connection between the smart devices, which scatter everywhere around us, and the physical world to ensure full automation that eventually improves human lifestyle. Some examples of IoT-enabled material devices include heart monitoring implants, automobiles with embedded sensors, firefighter devices, smart thermostat systems, and Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi) enabled washer/dryers, to name a few. As the platform of IoT is expanding, the number of IoT-enabled applications is also rapidly growing, which also results in large scale growth of smart devices. This swift increase in the number of sensing things generates diverse data and storage at much faster rate becomes essential.

The ambitious nature of such a technology demands a robust system to transfer the acquired data wirelessly to the backbone network. The problem has been addressed with the Narrow-band Internet of Things (NB-IoT) standard in the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Long Term Evolution (LTE) Release 13 which standardizes the technology for providing wide area connectivity for massive Machine-type communications (MTC) for IoT. NB-IoT is a cellular radio access technology that provides Low-power wide-area (LPWA) IoT connectivity in licensed spectrum, unlike short-range technologies in unlicensed spectrum, including Bluetooth, ZigBee, and so on, and unlike LPWA technologies including Sig-Fox, Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN), and so on. The 3GPP design targets for Release 13 were those typical for MTC: long device battery life, low device complexity to ensure low cost, support for massive numbers of devices, and coverage enhancements to be able to reach devices in basements and
other challenging locations.

NB-IoT significantly improves the power/energy requirements of user devices, system capacity and spectrum efficiency, especially in deep coverage. The need for reducing the cost for these remotely stationed peer devices also demands a reduction in their operation cost. This is possible if the overall power consumption of the devices could be limited to a minimum operating value, maximizing the overall time of its operation with a one charge battery pack. This reflects a low power operation with a substantial need to reduce the power of the radio module of these devices. All this should be done without compromising on the performance of the circuits, while following the 3GPP defined specifications. Consequently, the development of highly linear, wide-band, low power wireless receiver is required to cater to the flexibility, cost and use case scenarios of such a system in a real world. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
Raghunath, Rohan LU and Prabhu, Ghanashyam Ravindranath LU
supervisor
organization
course
EITM02 20172
year
type
H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
subject
keywords
NB-IoT, FTNC, Harmonic rejection, N-path filtering, RX Front End, Low power, Wide-band, Passive mixer, Current mode
report number
LU/LTH_EIT 2018-636
language
English
id
8949497
date added to LUP
2018-06-18 16:13:28
date last changed
2018-06-18 16:13:28
@misc{8949497,
  abstract     = {{Advancement of technology with the aid of new application, wireless communication has grown rapidly in the past two decades. Recently, in the wireless communication industry, Narrowband- Internet of Things (NB-IoT) is being discussed by everyone, as the most important emerging technology of the day. Being a wireless technology, owing to the exodus of devices to be connected, with due consideration to the data transfer requirements, and spectrum allowances, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) have standardized the technology with a list of specifications. In this thesis, a comprehensive study is conducted to find the most promising receiver front end architectures for an NB-IoT User Equipment (UE) which is highly integrable, has the least DC power consumption at its best performance and has the least price per unit.

For NB-IoT, the 3GPP standard mandates the requirement of a receiver front end to be capable of tuning to signals within the frequency range 450MHz to 2200MHz, thus necessitating it to wide-band reception with better selectivity. By emphasizing upon the reduction of price per device demands, comparing the characteristic trade-offs of the various architectures, analysis of the typical receiver’s non-ideal factors and considering the specifications and requirements, an inductor-less, external Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) filter-less Direct Conversion Receiver (DCR) has been chosen as the potential candidate.

The study reveals that the Frequency Translational Noise Canceling (FTNC) receiver front end and gain switching receiver front end stand as the most promising receiver topologies. The former, with its two modes of operation, saves DC power, displays a decent linearity performance and a relaxed trade-off between noise figure and linearity; while the latter has the advantage of variable gain control at RF which supports lower DC power consumption in the presence of large wanted signal without compromising largely on noise figure. The simulated DC power consumption for each of the architectures have a maximum of 40mW at their best performance with DSB noise figure ≈ 2dB, impedance matching <-15dB, <-70dBm spurious emission from LO divider circuits, and 3rd order harmonic rejection >40dB. The study is conducted in 40nm CMOS technology.}},
  author       = {{Raghunath, Rohan and Prabhu, Ghanashyam Ravindranath}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{A Linear, Wide-band, Low-Power Receiver for Narrowband- Internet of Things (NB-IoT)}},
  year         = {{2018}},
}