Effect of RF Front-End Parameters on UWB-OFDM Receiver Performances in Presence of Adjacent Channel Interferers

In this paper we present a system simulation tool (SST) to analyze the performances of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) ultra-wideband (UWB) receiver. The non-linear receiver RF front-end operates in presence of adjacent channel interferers. The RF front-end signal to noise ratio (SNR) and the third order inter-modulation products (IIP3) are considered and their effects on the bit error rate (BER) of the overall receiver were investigated. A simple non-linear model including gain and IIP3 is calibrated with a real AM/AM response of a low noise amplifier (LNA). The LNA was designed in a 0.13 mum CMOS process and uses the low UWB frequency band (3.1 - 4.8 GHz). Using the SST, the effect of front-end various performances on the receiver´s overall BER were studied. As an application, BER is also evaluated from measured IIP3 and NF parameters of a real UWB RF front-end previously designed and tested.