A Joint and Seamless Compensation of Close-In and Reciprocal Mixing Phase Noise Distortion

Abstract

The phase noise (PN) distortion represents a major source of performance degradation in modern receivers. The phase noise distorts the desired signal via two mechanisms. In the first, the desired signal is distorted primarily by the phase noise spectrum near the carrier frequency. An extensive body of literature exists in compensating for this close-in phase noise distortion, most of which rely on the use of known pilot signals. The other mechanism is the outer skirts of the phase noise spectrum corrupting the desired signal via reciprocal mixing of interfering blockers. There is very little work on compensating for the effects of reciprocal mixing with no practical solution to date. This article presents an approach to jointly and seamlessly compensate for both close-in and reciprocal mixing phase noise distortion. The proposed approach makes no assumptions on the received signal spectrum, the availability of pilot tones, the phase noise spectrum, or knowledge of the dominant blockers. The proposed approach is analyzed and compared with the conventional receiver. Simulation results are presented to validate the analysis as well as to provide greater insights. Measurement results of a prototype receiver show over 10 dB improvement compared to a conventional receiver.