The Impact of Jitter on the Signal-to-Noise Ratio in Uniform Bandpass Sampling Receivers

Receiver front-ends, enabling multi-mode multi-band operation, are essential for future efficient mobile communications and require a proper parametrization to achieve certain performance requirements. A key component in the receive chain is the analog-to-digital converter (ADC). To determine feasible configurations of the ADC, an abstract model is investigated in order to evaluate the performance in terms of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of bandpass sampling receivers. It models the available types of sampling circuits, the impact of stationary and non-stationary jitter processes, as well as limited quantization resolution. The derived ADC model is used to determine the dominating jitter effect, either aperture or clock jitter, depending on the receiver setup. Furthermore, required root mean square jitter values are derived analytically for a predefined receiver noise figure. A properly designed bandpass sampling receiver, matching the proposed maximum jitter requirements, avoids significant SNR performance losses and can be employed in mobile communications.