Digital reception with radio frequency sampling

Abstract

A radio frequency signal is received by using a sigma-delta analog-to-digital converter to sample the radio frequency signal at a sampling rate and to generate therefrom 1-bit digital samples representing a digital intermediate frequency signal. The intermediate frequency signal is demodulated to generate in-phase and quadrature samples. Demodulation may be performed by generating a first mixed signal by combining the 1-bit digital samples representing the intermediate frequency signal with a first sequence representing a cosine mixing signal; generating a second mixed signal by combining the 1-bit digital samples representing the intermediate frequency signal with a second sequence representing a sine mixing signal; and decimating the first and second mixed signals to generate the in-phase and quadrature samples. In alternative embodiments, the intermediate frequency signal is directly converted to in-phase and quadrature signals by using bandpass decimation filtering to subsample two time-shifted sequences of the intermediate frequency. In another alternative, the sigma-delta analog-to-digital converter uses subsampling to convert the radio frequency signal to a first intermediate frequency, and a decimation filter is used to further convert the signal to a second intermediate frequency. An IQ demodulator then reconstructs the in-phase and quadrature signals from the second intermediate frequency signal.