RF impairments in high-rate wireless systems - understanding the impact of TX/RX-asymmetry

Dealing with radio frequency (RF) front-end impairments will be one of the major design challenges for next- generation wireless communication systems due to conflicting requirements, such as high data rate, low cost and low power consumption. The use of digital compensation of the imperfections appears a very promising method to meet specifications. Pursuing that path, however, requires thorough understanding of the influence of the RF front-end non-idealities on the received signal and the resulting system performance. To this end, this paper reviews the impact of three important impairments, namely, phase noise, IQ imbalance and nonlinearities, on the performance of next-generation high-rate wireless systems. A specific focus is on the difference between transmitter (TX) and receiver (RX) incurred imperfections. Moreover, a generalized error model to capture to aggregate influence of different impairments is presented.