Co-location Deployment Considerations for Direct RF Sampling Transceivers

The first wave of 5GNR network deployment is expected to coexist and co-locate with existing networks for faster and more economical rollouts. In light of the rapid adoption of highly integrated merchant silicon solutions for the radio unit (RU), such as the Zynq® UltraScale+™ RFSoC DFE, and the use of direct radio frequency (RF) sampling technology,this white paper examines the implications and considerations of co-locating a 5GNR radio with other high-power radios in proximity on design and architectural choices. It provides an in-depth analysis for an example receiver design with RF sampling data converters to illustrate how it can best handle the co-location requirements over traditional zero intermediate frequency (ZIF)receivers. Furthermore, it examines the general challenges faced by ZIF architecture for wide-band 5G radio design that is solved by RF sampling data converters.