Power consumption of A/D converters for software radio applications

An “ideal” software radio receiver is often considered as an analog/digital (A/D) converter connected directly to an antenna. This paper analyzes this ideal approach in terms of the power consumption of the A/D converter, based on a theoretical analysis of its minimum possible value. The results indicate that for the number of bits required to cope with the slow and fast fading environments and consequent large dynamic range encountered in a mobile radio system, the power consumption of the A/D converter is a fundamental limitation