On the limits of communication with low-precision analog-to-digital conversion at the receiver

As communication systems scale up in speed and bandwidth, the cost and power consumption of high-precision (e.g., 8-12 bits) analog-to-digital conversion (ADC) becomes the limiting factor in modern transceiver architectures based on digital signal processing. In this work, we explore the impact of l...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE transactions on communications Vol. 57; no. 12; pp. 3629 - 3639
Main Authors: Singh, J., Dabeer, O., Madhow, U.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: New York, NY IEEE 01.12.2009
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
Subjects:
Additive white noise
Algorithms
Analog to digital conversion
analog to digital converter
Analog-digital conversion
Analog-digital conversion, digital-analog conversion, pcm coding
Applied sciences
Asymptotic properties
AWGN
AWGN channel
Bandwidth
Channel capacity
Conversion
Costs
Digital signal processors
Energy consumption
Exact sciences and technology
Information, signal and communications theory
Mathematical models
Miscellaneous
Noise
Optimization
optimum input distribution
Pulse modulation
Quantization
Radiocommunications
Sampling, quantization
Signal and communications theory
Signal processing
Signal to noise ratio
Studies
Telecommunications
Telecommunications and information theory
Transmitters. Receivers
Performance evaluation
AWGN
High precision
Digital processing
Transceiver
AWGN channels
AD converter
Signal quantization
Electric power consumption
Pulse amplitude modulation
quantization
optimum input distribution
Channel capacity
AD conversion
Signalling
Algorithm
Upper bound
Power consumption
Telecommunication system
Discrete time
Signal processing
Quantifier
AWGN channel
Signal to noise ratio
analog to digital converter
ISSN:0090-6778, 1558-0857
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:As communication systems scale up in speed and bandwidth, the cost and power consumption of high-precision (e.g., 8-12 bits) analog-to-digital conversion (ADC) becomes the limiting factor in modern transceiver architectures based on digital signal processing. In this work, we explore the impact of lowering the precision of the ADC on the performance of the communication link. Specifically, we evaluate the communication limits imposed by low-precision ADC (e.g., 1-3 bits) for transmission over the real discrete-time additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel, under an average power constraint on the input. For an ADC with K quantization bins (i.e., a precision of log 2 K bits), we show that the input distribution need not have any more than K+1 mass points to achieve the channel capacity. For 2-bin (1-bit) symmetric quantization, this result is tightened to show that binary antipodal signaling is optimum for any signal-to- noise ratio (SNR). For multi-bit quantization, a dual formulation of the channel capacity problem is used to obtain tight upper bounds on the capacity. The cutting-plane algorithm is employed to compute the capacity numerically, and the results obtained are used to make the following encouraging observations : (a) up to a moderately high SNR of 20 dB, 2-3 bit quantization results in only 10-20% reduction of spectral efficiency compared to unquantized observations, (b) standard equiprobable pulse amplitude modulated input with quantizer thresholds set to implement maximum likelihood hard decisions is asymptotically optimum at high SNR, and works well at low to moderate SNRs as well.
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ISSN:0090-6778
1558-0857
DOI:10.1109/TCOMM.2009.12.080559