nutaq 4g/5g sdr solutions
TRANSCRIPT
Company Profile
• Corporate headquarter in Quebec, Canada
• 55 employees
• 28 years of existence
• 5 PhDs and over 20 engineers
• Local technical support in China: Beijing (Hirain), Shanghai (CCEO), Chengdu (Yu He)
• Two revenue streams: Software Defined Radios (90%) & Engineering Services (10%)
• More than 15 years of using Xilinx and Matlab for signal processing
•Two divisions: Nutaq Innovation and NuRAN Wireless
Company Profile
Nutaq Innovation
• Flexible, programmable SDR platforms
• For researcher and development
• Open FPGA architecture (Xilinx)
• Matlab/Simulink and Xilinx tools
• “Technology eve” mendate
• Actively developing 4G & 5G
NuRAN Wireless
• Radio Access Network for Remote Locations
• Carrier grade GSM micro-BTS
• 2G BSC, 2G/3G Core Network and billing solution
• 10’000 BTS deployed in the field
• Lowest cost, lowest power consumption on the market
• Official OEM manufacturer of Facebook’s
Open Cellular 2G/4G plateforme
Paving the way to commercial 5G RAN
Nutaq Innovation (2017)
NuRAN Wireless (2021)
Ref: https://www.ericsson.com/networks/offerings/5g-radio
Nutaq Key Products
Wideband RF Digitizer
• SigInt, Spectrum Monitoring, EW, Radar
• 0 to 27 GHz (SDR)
• 500 MSPS (160 MHz IBW)
• 1 to 4 Rx channels per FPGA
TitanMIMO-6
• Phased array, MIMO Communications
• 0 to 6 GHz (SDR)
• 120 MSPS
• 8 TRx channels per FPGA
PicoLTE Network in a Box
• LTE, private network, testing, Highly configurable
•Rel13 Compliant, support NB IoT
• Standard and Non-Standard LTE bands (SDR)
• 2x 15dBM peak
We offer engineering services including application development & product customisation
Software Tool Flow
• Design Flow
TitanMIMO-6S
Very high channel density: 8 Tx and 8 Rx per FPGA (lower cost, less weight, less cables etc…)
• Radio640 • Based on Analog Device AD9361 RF Chip • 70 MHz to 6 GHz • 2x2 MIMO FMC (4x4 Double Stack) • Up to 56MHz OTA RT Bandwidth • Supports TDD and FDD Transmission Modes
Hardware Architecture
• Unique Point-to-Point links (7x 16 Gbps)
TitanMIMO-6S
Flexibility
• Every research project is different: different goals, different requirements, etc..
• Some measurements require:
high fidelity
high throughput
high storage capacity
• Depending on your goal, here are examples of “Signal Paths” that can be implemented
Massive MIMO testbeds
“On-board RAM” signal path
“On-board SSD” Signal Path
“Real-time” signal path
“Central CPU” signal path
“Distributed CPUs” signal path
Massive MIMO Ref Design
Parameter Value Note
Bandwidth 20MHz Occupied BW is 18MHz
Carrier frequency 2.4GHz or 5.5GHz (up to 6GHz)
Sampling rate 30.72MS/s IFFT/FFT sampling rate
FFT size 2048
Number of used subcarriers 1200 Few subcarriers are reserved for DC nulling and guard band
Slot time 0.5ms
Sub-frame time 1ms
Frame time 10ms
Number of user terminals (UTs) 16
Number of BS antennas 128 Scalable up to 256
Massive MIMO Ref Design
Phase/Gain Array Calibration
Status: Tx and Rx Phase/Gain automatic calibration implemented and released in 2016
We use a PN bit sequence (order 23) and apply QPSK modulation to generate a training sequence trough a reference transmitter used to measure the relative gain and phase offset between receive channels. Digital complexes multipliers are used to apply correction factors to each channel Rx channels to compensate for the measured gain and phase offset. The same process is applied to measure and compensate the relative gain and phase offset between transmit channels, using a reference receiver.
Calibration Design
• Calibration Steps: RX Calibration
RX Acquisition RX Calibration Factors Computation Setting Correction Factors on FPGA
Calibration Design
• Calibration Steps: TX Calibration
TX Acquisition TX Calibration Factors Computation Setting Correction Factors on FPGA
Phase/Gain Array Calibration
Before Rx calibration: phase and gain offsets can be observed
Phase/Gain Array Calibration
After Rx calibration: Phase within +/- 0.5 degrees, gain within 1%
Massive MIMO uplink
Multicarrier Massive MIMO uplink model implemented in 4 User Terminals (consisting of Zynq processor board and Nutaq radios) and 16x16 TitanMIMO BTS.
Massive MIMO uplink
The constellation shown below using ZF detection technique on 4 User Terminals simultaneously (multiuser MIMO).
4x UE Constellation at 5.05 GHz 4x UE Constellation at 2.45 GHz
Reciprocity Calibration
In modern communication systems, pilot symbols are transmitted from every antenna of a base station (BS) in the downlink channel and received at the terminal side, then sent back to the BS with channel state information (CSI) to calculate pre-coding coefficients. In Massive MIMO system, such a procedure would significantly degenerate the spectral efficiency due to the amount of feedback information and terminal processing power required from the large number of BS antennas. Instead, a more common approach is to compute proper pre-coding coefficients based on uplink CSI based on the reciprocity of the channel when the BS is operating in TDD mode. In wireless systems, we generally assume that the propagation channel is reciprocal. But the different transceiver radio frequency (RF) chains are usually not. Hence, we need to estimate the different frequency responses between the uplink and downlink hardware chains. Such a process is called reciprocity calibration. Status: reciprocity calibration method based on LS method and Argo method implemented in Matlab. LS method will be released as part of Ref Design in 2017
Massive MIMO downlink
Massive MIMO downlink implemented in Matlab code. Hardware integration is on-going. Over-the-Air results will be available in coming weeks…
Status: Will be released as part of Massive MIMO Ref Design in 2017
Clocking Module
• 10 MHz Reference Clock Input • 5V power supply • USB Connector
Status: Available since 2016
Antenna System
• 64-element TDD antenna array system • 64 WDPD.2458.B antennas elements • 2x16 array configuration • Half lambda separation at 2.4 GHz • SSMB to SMA cables •Mechanical design and assembly (plexiglass)
Status: Available in 2017
Development of new BBU
Development of new BBU to replace Kermode Octal V6
AMC
Xilinx Virtex UltraScale+
VU13P
Footprint B2104
416 I/O
76 GTY @ 32.75Gb/s
High-Pin-
Count FMC 1
DDR-3
MicroBlaze code
128 MB
High-Pin-
Count FMC 2
DDR4 SODIMMFlash memory
64 MB
Port 0-3MGT (x4)
Port 4-7MGT (x4)
Port 15GPIO (x2) or LVDS (x1)
Port 17-20GPIO (x8) or LVDS (x4)
FCLKA
IPMI (I2C)
TCLKA, TCLKC(input only)
RTM
RTM 0-3MGT (x4)
RTM 4-7MGT (x4)
RTM 8-11MGT (x4)
RTM 12-15MGT (x4)
MGT (x4)
RTM 20-23MGT (x4)
RTM 24-27MGT (x4)
RTM 28-31MGT (x4)
JTAG
LA[00-33] P-N (full)
HA[00-23] P-N (full)
HB[00-21] P-N (full)
CLK0_M2C, CLK1_M2C
10 GTY 10Gb/s
2 GTY CLK
Module
management
controller (MMC)
I2C
Switch
Carrier I2C
devices
I2C
Ma
ste
r
Ma
na
ge
me
nt I/O
s
RTM
JTAG
priority
switch
Mestor interface
JTAG interfaces (FPGA/IPMI)
User I/Os: 14 LVDS pairs
FPGA UART interface
Us
er I/O
s
UA
RT
IPM
I
JT
AGJTAG
chain
TCLKB, TCLKD(bidir)
UA
RT
FM
C2_
CL
K2
FM
C2_
CL
K3
FMC2_CLK2_BIDIR
FMC2_CLK3_BIDIR
TCLKA
TCLKC
FMC1_CLK2_BIDIR
FMC1_CLK3_BIDIR
TCLKA
TCLKC
FMC1_CLK2
FMC1_CLK3
LA[00-33] P-N (full)
HA[00-23] P-N (full)
HB[00-21] P-N (full)
CLK0_M2C, CLK1_M2C
10 GTY 10Gb/s
2 GTY CLK
100
MHz
RTM 16-19
Port 8-11MGT (x4)
Status: Design Stage. Expected release 2018
Nutaq Massive MIMO Detection Patent
Implemented several low complexity linear detection techniques. BER and Spectral efficiency (SE) simulation results which include NUTAQ's patented method are shown bellow. At a lower complexity NUTAQ method does not incur any performance loss.
Status: http://nuranwireless.com/investors/5g-international-process-patent-application/