Cognitive Radio: Field Programmable RF devices offer disruptive opportunities

Paul Dillien - August 5, 2013 Without doubt, baseband technology has advanced steadily with the introduction of multicore processors and memories that are faster and lower priced, but RF chips have not stood still either. The cognitive radio concept was born out of the realization that the RF spectrum is poorly used most of the time. The monetary value of spectrum has been demonstrated by the billions of dollars paid by telecommunications companies for cellular bands, and this incentivized regulatory bodies to review how best to use this precious resource. The concept behind cognitive radio is that the equipment finds a free channel and communicates the frequency and modulation details to the receiving end so that both sides can tune into the free channel. The term RF-aware means that a cognitive radio must be capable of detecting the radio environment that surrounds it at that moment in time. This requires that the equipment knows what frequency bands are available and those that are not permitted or restricted, such as frequencies reserved for military use. One way of establishing unoccupied channels is to scan through the entire potentially useful frequency spectrum and detect the RF power density at every point. This requires a very agile and programmable receiver that can scan over many decades in a precisely controlled way. It also, of course, implies that the transmitter is equally flexible. A UK company called Lime Microsystems set out in 2006 to develop the most flexible radio transceiver built as a single chip to provide a cost effective RF solution. The target market for this universal transceiver was the nascent market for small cell base stations including femtocells and other infrastructure related equipment such as repeaters and remote radio heads. The resulting Lime device turns out to be ideal for cognitive radio and software defined radio (SDR) applications too. In the early days of femtocell development, the future was far from certain, because there were many obstacles to overcome. Three key imperatives for the cellular operators are that the unit is low cost, plug and play, and that it does not interfere with the macro base station signals. Historically, operators who wanted to install additional capacity would employ frequency planners to plot the coverage of every base station and devise a plan that would not cause interference when they added new transmitters. This is clearly not possible with femtocells because they will be deployed in high volume at the home or business site of the customer. This, in turn, demands that the RF in the femtocell must be able to scan the available bands

and identify the frequencies used by the local macro station. The intelligence built into the unit would select alternate frequencies for the femtocell to use. The situation is further complicated because around the world a huge range of frequencies have been adopted. The introduction of Long Term Evolution (LTE) and LTE-Advanced exacerbates the situation, bringing the total to over 40 different bands in use around the world. The economics of semiconductor manufacturing strongly favor a single device that sells in high volume rather than producing a variety of lower volume point solutions. In this application the answer is to make a device that is programmable across the whole spectrum. However, this is far from easy. Lime chose Field Programmable Radio Frequency (FPRF) device as a description of the first highly integrated universal RF chip. The specification calls for a wide frequency range, starting at a lower limit of 300 MHz and with continuous coverage up to 3,800 MHz, which is a range of over 12:1. The classic superheterodyne architecture of using mixers to derive a fixed intermediate frequency (IF) is replaced by a direct conversion or zero IF to reduce the complexity of the chip. This, in turn, makes demands on the receiver and transmitter phase locked loops (PLL) used as local oscillators, as they also need to cover the entire range. Here, the solution is to use a mixed signal technology that can combine digital logic with high performance analog and RF blocks. The resulting PLLs use programmable fractional-N dividers and a shared reference input clock in the range 23 to 41 MHz to generate the whole range of RF frequencies from a single clock. This gives greater flexibility for clocking the FPRF because it can use any stable source, including the main system clock, to save cost. The semiconductor process chosen for the FPRF device is a BiCMOS technology sourced from a US foundry that supports the requirements for the analog and digital elements of the high performance circuitry utilised in the chip. The design includes on-chip dual analog to digital (ADC) and digital to analog (DAC) convertors. The ADCs provide the baseband chip with a digital bit stream of the received signal organized as in-phase (I) and quadrature (Q) components or the receiver can output the analog signals. The baseband device can then process this I&Q data to recover the voice or data that was transmitted. The FPRF Receiver and Transmitter

Figure 1. Block diagram of the FPRF receiver For transmit, the baseband provides an RF output modulated by I&Q data streamed into the DACs. In both paths the chip contains filters that can be programmed for a range of different bandwidths. This restricts the signals to the band of interest and attenuates the inevitable alias and quantization noise introduced by the data convertors. Each of the amplifiers features programmable gain and the chip provides a choice of Low Noise Amplifier (LNA) for the received signal. The device is programmed via a Serial Port Interface (SPI) connection to make the operation both fast and easy to use.

Figure 2. FPRF transmit functional block diagram This brief description should illustrate why the FPRF device from Lime is suitable for cognitive radio. It fulfills the requirement for a flexible, frequency agile device that is low power and economical. In most applications the digital processing and control would be performed by a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA).

Figure 3. FPGA and FPRF provide a platform for a cognitive radio system, the above board is from Nuand that combines an Altera FPGA and Lime FPRF The FPGA can be used to decode the digital I&Q data output by the FPRF chip and to encode the data to be transmitted. An advantage of using an FPGA to perform the hardware acceleration tasks of the baseband functions is that it can be designed for bespoke

systems where no existing ASSP device is available, as would be the case for cognitive radio systems. The design can be customized to suit the system, and as the logic can be dynamically reconfigured during operation, some sophisticated hardware acceleration can be achieved. For example, the logic can be reconfigured to produce I&Q data that provide a Quadrature Phase Shift Key (QPSK) modulation where the channel has a poor signal to noise ratio, or Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) where good signal conditions allow for faster data transmission. Another advantage of even low-cost FPGAs is that they include complex clock management blocks. These may feature combinations of analog PLLs or Digital Locked Loops (DLLs) that provide frequency synthesis and phase shifting. The lowjitter clock generation and jitter filtering can be used to generate the clocks to drive the Rx and Tx PLLs of the FPRF for less demanding applications. The intelligence to reconfigure the logic and the parameters of the FPRF chips is provided by software running on a system processor. Both Xilinx and Altera offer devices which include high performance ARM processors embedded as hard cores alongside programmable logic. This gives the opportunity to reduce the chip count and increase the system performance. The illustrations below show the concept of having a Zynq device from Xilinx as the baseband chip. Zynq is chosen because there are multiple fast on-chip connections and data busses between the ARM and the programmable logic to provide high bandwidth. Operating System (OS) support, such as Linux, along with design and debug tools and a comprehensive support eco-system to design the programmable logic and ARM combination are readily available. In a cognitive radio, the first operation is to scan the airwaves for free frequencies. The processor on the Zynq device sets the bandwidth and gain controls in the FPRF sequentially, using the SPI interface to load the registers. (They are shown here as individual paths for clarity, but are time multiplexed over the four-wire SPI). The combination of the ARM processor and the programmable logic core are used to change the Fractional-N and frequency on the receive PLL through SPI. This allows the Zynq to step through the channels and the received I&Q data gives the instantaneous level of the signal. The programmable logic would typically be used to process the data from the FPRF device, and the ARM software can be written to pause on any channel with signals below a predefined level. If required, the Zynq could adjust the gain or bandwidth to ensure that the channel has no traffic. If required, the system can scan through the process a multiple number of times to establish the current traffic patterns.

Figure 4. The FPRF receiver scans for free channels under software control, and locks onto the selected frequency Once the status is established, the cognitive radio can transmit what frequency, bandwidth and modulation scheme it has selected to use. This might be on a predetermined channel used exclusively for this data. The FPRF is capable of full duplex operation, and once the transmit and receive channels, bandwidth and modulation schemes to be utilized are mutually agreed between the sending and receiving ends of the cognitive radio, the system can switch to those settings.

Figure 5. Software control of the transmitter in the FPRF Having dual ARM processors on the FPGA provides enough resource to run an Operating System (OS) such as Linux, together with a software stack. The programmable logic can include error correction codes that can detect and correct errors. A sudden increase in errors would typically indicate that another radio is transmitting on the same frequency. In this case, the software may decide to rescan for a free channel and agree with the far end receiver to switch to an alternate channel. The FPRF is also capable of operating in a frequency hopping system, where the channel is changed periodically through a predefined sequence, as is sometimes used for secure communications. The ability to adopt various modulation schemes and different bandwidths allows the cognitive radio to optimize the available channels at that moment in time. For example, if data is to be communicated over a low noise, wide frequency band, then the FPRF bandwidth can be set at 28 MHz and a high level modulation scheme such as 16-QAM can be used for fast data transfer. Alternatively, voice might use a restricted bandwidth setting of, say, 1.5 MHz to achieve communication over crowded airwaves. A sophisticated design A more sophisticated design can be achieved by employing two FPRF devices. This could support 2 x 2 Multiple-In-Multiple-Out (MIMO) transmissions. MIMO techniques have some clear advantages, as they allow successful reception in noisy channels with a high level of multipath propagation. In addition, MIMO is used to increase the overall data transfer rate of

the channel. Each FPRF device would be connected to its own transmit and receive antennas, and the FPGA would be designed with additional circuitry to decode the baseband signals. There are still some challenges to building a cognitive radio, as you might expect. The receiver block diagram shows three Low Noise Amplifiers (LNAs) on the chip. One is optimized for signals in the 300 MHz to 2,800 MHz, a second covers 1.5-3.8 GHz and the final LNA is designed for operation over the full 0.3 to 3.8 range. The sensitivities and noise figures are better for the restricted bandwidth, which needs to be considered if the design must cover the entire range. A further challenge is to design a very wide-band antenna that is efficient across all channels. This problem is simplified for systems working over a restricted range of frequencies. The maximum Lime device RF output level of 1mW is ideally suited for the short range required in small cells, but will require amplification in a cognitive radio application. Again, this can be a challenge if the full RF spectrum is required. An open-source community already exists for FRPF-related subjects. Here users can find information, buy low cost evaluation boards and download free FPRF configuration software, as well as the printed circuit board layout for the FPRF. As an example that is relevant to cognitive radio, users can download a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) application that displays like a spectrum analyzer. The receiver in the chip is swept across the band to listen to all frequencies in turn and the instantaneous output is displayed on a PC screen as the spectral plot. The open-source site will be developed to provide more projects that are directly relevant to both professionals and hobbyists interested in flexible wireless transceivers. The expectation is that it will become an indispensable resource for designers of SDR and advanced cognitive radio systems. If you are planning to transmit wireless signals, you must check your local regulations on permitted power levels and frequencies.