Effects of LO phase and amplitude imbalances and phase noise on M-QAM transceiver performance

This paper presents a rigorous analytical model for analyzing the effects of local oscillator output imperfections such as phase/amplitude imbalances and phase noise on M-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (M-QAM) transceiver performances. A closed-form expression of the error vector magnitude (EVM) and an analytic expression of the symbol error rate (SER) are derived considering a single carrier, linear transceiver link with additive white Gaussian noise channel. The proposed analytical model achieves a good agreement with the simulation results based on Monte-Carlo method. The proposed QAM imperfection analysis model provides an efficient means for system and circuit designers to analyze the wireless transceiver performances and properly trade-off and specify the transceiver block specifications.