Aggressively voltage overscaled adaptive RF systems using error control at the bit and symbol levels

Voltage overscaling for power reduction in RF systems has been limited by the need to maintain sufficient overscaling guard bands to ensure that minimum signal quality requirements of the end to end communication link are met. In this paper, we propose error control mechanisms at the symbol (probabilistic symbol remapping) and bit levels (code based correction and feedback) that allow more aggressive voltage overscaling than is possible otherwise. Error control feedback is used to continuously monitor and control the tuning knobs of the front end RF circuitry to trade off signal quality vs. power consumption. Real time image and voice data is used to demonstrate this concept. Significant power savings is achieved using the proposed scheme while maintaining minimum signal quality as required by the wireless communication link.