Analytical evaluation and optimization of the ADC (analog-to-digital converter) in software radio architectures

The software radio concept is a topic of widespread interest in wireless cellular systems. Due to the high sampling ratio and quantization requirements, the ADC (analog-to-digital converter) is as key component of any software radio architecture. In this paper we present an analytical tool for evaluating the quantization requirements within the ADC used in software radio architectures. For this purpose, we take advantage of the Gaussian behavior of the multi-band/multi-user signal at the input of the wideband ADC and employ results on Gaussian signals and memoryless nonlinearities. This characterization is then used for the performance evaluation and optimization of different quantization characteristics.