Synchronization of Signal Processing in Multiple RF Data Converter Subsystems

Multi-channel applications targeting very large scale systems (RADAR, electronic warfare,satellite communication, and massive MIMO) are now combining multiple input multiple output(MIMO), beam-forming, and controlled latencies with other classical requirements of RF channel design such as linearity, noise and spectral purity. This shift in technology is occurring simultaneously to the move to the RF direct conversion to enable the level of integration
required. The radio transmitter and radio receiver architecture, a MIMO system will trigger a requirement to distinguish multiple data streams.Most of the technologies used to encode and decode the information are passing through the radio signal requires RF path alignment to enable the MIMO transceiver system. Thisrequirement becomes mandatory and critical when the RF subsystem enables beam-forming.Therefore, latency control from user data to the antenna becomes a critical requirement and is linked to the design system RF clocking requirements using direct RF conversion.