Digital Repeaters
ART/138CP
20120611 - 20131211
13319
Mr Benjamin K Hui
1. Hardware Platform (Industry):
ICS Digital Repeater Unit:
One FPGA (Stratix or Cyclone or Arria or equivalent) together with the RF transceiver and power amplifier. The FPGA will implement DPD for PA linearization and ICS for interference cancellation.
RF Transceiver Board: Using third-party components, the RF transceiver will convert the IF to RF and vice versa for GSM multi-carrier/3G/4G (2 standards dependent on customer feedback).
Power Amplifier:
Power amplifier with a signal bandwidth of 2-25 MHz for thermal efficiency improvement.
Weatherproof Enclosure
Service & Donor Antennas
Pair of antennas with high front to back ratios and high isolation
2. Hardware Feasibility Study (Compact):
ICS Digital Repeater Unit (Compact and Semi-Portable):
One FPGA (Stratix or Cyclone or Aria or equivalent) together with the RF transceiver and power amplifier. The FPGA will implement DPD for PA linearization and ICS for interference cancellation.
RF Transceiver Board: Using third-party components, the RF transceiver will convert the IF to RF and visa versa for emergency access bands.
Power Amplifier:
Power amplifier with a signal bandwidth of 2-25 MHz for thermal efficiency improvement.
Weatherproof and Harsh environments Enclosure
Service & Donor Antennas (Compact)
Pair of antennas with high front to back ratios and high isolation
3. Technical Design Documents for each hardware platform
Altera [Sponsor]
Digital Radio Frequency Communication Co. Ltd. [Sponsor]
This project focuses on developing a new platform technology for enabling advanced RF and antenna technology. The target application platform is broadcast and communications technology. The project will focus on three areas: 1) Combining Interference Cancellation Scheme (ICS) 2) Digital Pre-Distortion (DPD) for Power Amplifiers, and 3) Advanced Power Amplifiers in order to create a low-cost and compact repeater for 3G and 4G networks. The DPD for power amplifiers is essential for making digital repeaters reconfigurable (software upgrades, rather than hardware upgrades) and for lowering the cost of the platform by allowing usage of lower cost power amplifiers. The ICS increases the isolation by 30dB, allowing for the service and donor antennas to be placed more closer for a more compact digital repeater unit. The digital amplifier uses a digitally controlled circuit in order to decrease the dissipative thermal energy, allowing the digital repeater to use a smaller heat-sink. The platform project builds on prior experience and IP in active antennas, beam-forming, and isolation in order to create advanced service and donor antennas and know-how developed in the previous Reconfigurable RF project to combine the DPD for power amplifiers together with the newer ICS technology. The platform technologies developed will have immediate application within the communications industry, both in small niche markets and the larger infrastructure markets. The new platform technology will enable the Antenna and RF group to work together both with industry and cross-domain within the CT group and ASTRI.