Challenges in Clock Synchronization for On-Site Coding Digital Beamformer

Typical radio frequency (RF) digital beamformers can be highly complex. In addition to a suitable antenna array, they require numerous receiver chains, demodulators, data converter arrays, and digital signal processors. To recover and reconstruct the received signal, synchronization is required sinc...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Satheesh Bojja Venkatakrishnan, Elias A. Alwan, John L. Volakis
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Wiley 2017-01-01
Series:International Journal of Reconfigurable Computing
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2017/7802735
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Summary:Typical radio frequency (RF) digital beamformers can be highly complex. In addition to a suitable antenna array, they require numerous receiver chains, demodulators, data converter arrays, and digital signal processors. To recover and reconstruct the received signal, synchronization is required since the analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), digital-to-analog converters (DACs), field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), and local oscillators are all clocked at different frequencies. In this article, we present a clock synchronization topology for a multichannel on-site coding receiver (OSCR) using the FPGA as a master clock to drive all RF blocks. This approach reduces synchronization errors by a factor of 8, when compared to conventional digital beamformer.
ISSN:1687-7195
1687-7209