Blind I/Q Signal Separation-Based Solutions for Receiver Signal Processing

Abstract

This paper introduces some novel digital signal processing (DSP)-based approaches to some of the most fundamental tasks of radio receivers, namely, channel equalization, carrier synchronization, and I/Q mismatch compensation. The leading principle is to show that all these problems can be solved blindly (i.e., without training signals) by forcing the I and Q components of the observed data as independent as possible. Blind signal separation (BSS) is then introduced as an efficient tool to carry out these tasks, and simulation examples are used to illustrate the performance of the proposed approaches. The main application area of the presented carrier synchronization and I/Q mismatch compensation techniques is in direct-conversion type receivers, while the proposed channel equalization principles basically apply to any radio architecture.