A Novel High-Pass Delta–Sigma Modulator-Based Digital-IF Transmitter With Enhanced Performance for SDR Applications

This brief presents a new transmitter architecture based on digital-intermediate frequency (IF) high-pass delta–sigma modulator (HPDSM). The proposed digital-IF transmitter topology utilizes a novel complex HPDSM topology to address the high quantization-noise power problem in Cartesian band-pass BPDSM and HPDSM-based digital-IF transmitters, without increasing the oversampling ratio of the signal or the clock rate of the system. To evaluate the performance of the new digital-IF transmitter system, a comparison with its Cartesian band-pass and high-pass counterparts, in terms of signal to noise and distortion radio (SNDR) and coding efficiency, was established. A simulation using 8 dB peak to average power ratio long term evolution signals with 1.24-MHz bandwidth showed that by integrating the proposed second-order complex HPDSM digital-IF in the transmitter, the power of the quantization noise is significantly reduced. The transmitter digital blocks were implemented on the BEEcube software-defined radio prototyping platform. The input signal is encoded by the new HPDSM topology and is up-converted and then fed to the inverse class-F switch-mode power amplifier. An overall efficiency of 12% was achieved by the proposed topology. Moreover, the output signal SNDR reached 37.8 dB and the adjacent channel leakage ratio at the lower and upper 1.25-MHz offset frequencies measured is equal to −35 dBc.