A novel ADC-less analog demodulation scheme for NR-STAR-MQAM constellations

Abstract

Extreme high-speed and high-capacity communications are one of the requirements for technologies to be implemented in the new generations of wireless networks. Moreover, new generations of wireless systems utilize millimeter-wave (mm-wave) frequency bands to have access to the much needed bandwidth. In multi-giga or tera bit-per-second wireless communications, digital signal processing (DSP) encounters great challenges. Implementing mixed-signal devices like analog-to-digital converter (ADC) to achieve high data rates leads to ultra-high power consumption. In this paper, we propose a straightforward and energy-efficient ADC-less analog demodulator for multiple-star M-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) constellations which are referred to as NR-STAR-MQAM. Our proposed demodulator is based on amplitude threshold estimation and phase detection, and, can extract information bits directly from the received signal. The robustness of the proposed scheme against analog processing errors has been analyzed.