Auburn University

Hechen Wang

Fa Dai

The present disclosure includes a time-to-digital converter (TDC) based RF-to-digital (RDC) data converter for time domain signal processing polar receivers. Polar data conversion achieves better SNR tolerance owing to its phase convergence near the origin in a polar coordinate. The proposed RDC consists of a TDC for phase detection and an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) for amplitude conversion. Unlike the conversional data converter, the proposed ADC's sampling position is guided by the detected phase result from the TDC's output. This TDC assisted data-converter architecture reduces the number of bits required for the ADC. In addition, oversampling is no longer needed. With precisely controlled tunable delay cells and gain compensator, this hybrid data convertor is capable to directly convert Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) waveforms and Amplitude Phase Shift Keying (APSK) waveforms directly from the RF signal without down-conversion. Thus, the proposed RDC architecture achieves lower power consumption and better performance comparing with conventional I/Q receivers.

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Auburn, AL, United States of America

Hechen Wang