Nonlinear distortion suppression for active analog self-interference cancellers in full duplex wireless communication

The advent and advancement of full-duplex (FD) technology in radio transceivers is expected to lead to full-duplex enabled multi-cell (FD-MC) networks in next generation wireless communication systems. Additional interferences between FD nodes and devices are the main challenges for the deployment of such networks. As in an early deployment scenario where the base stations (BS) operate in FD mode while the user equipments (UE) remain in the half-duplex (HD) mode, the self-interference (SI) within the FD-BS, the mutual interference (MI) between the FD-BS's and between the HD-UE's paired for FD scheduling are the major issues that could jeopardize the capitalization of FD system gains if they are not well addressed. In this paper, we present a system architecture for multi-stage cancellation of SI and joint cancellation of MI and residual SI in an FD-MC network. Multiple orthogonal pilots and their derived forms are utilized for channel estimation during a common training period. System-level delay calibration necessary for SI and MI channel estimation and cancellation is also provided.

This paper presents the nonlinear effects of the analog self-interference (SI) canceller and a practical solution to suppress the nonlinear distortions in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) full-duplex wireless communication systems. Due to the inherent nonlinearities of the active radio frequency (RF) components used to tune the attenuations and the phase shifts in the analog SI cancellers, nonlinear distortions are introduced to the residual SI signal by the analog cancellation and enter the receive chain. In this paper, we build an extra feedback chain for each analog canceller to obtain the reference signal coupled from the transmitted RF signal and observe the characteristics of the canceller. Using the observations, we develop a nonlinear model including all the cancellers at each receive antenna with the presence of MIMO SI channel to estimate the nonlinear components. By subtracting the model estimates from the received signal instantaneously, the corresponding nonlinear distortions are effectively mitigated. After the nonlinearity mitigation, a linear digital cancellation scheme based on the Maximum Likelihood Estimation is applied to further reduce the residual SI signal caused by the MIMO SI channel to the noise floor. Experiments are performed on a 2x2 MIMO full-duplex testbed to validate the effectiveness of the proposed nonlinearity modeling and suppression method using Long Term Evolution signals of 20-MHz bandwidth.

In wireless full-duplex communication systems, selfinterference (SI) cancellation is a key technique to ensure simultaneous transmission and reception on the same carrier frequency. During the SI cancellation, it has been shown that the oscillator phase noise dramatically affects the cancellation capability and thus needs consideration and suppression. In this paper, a novel time-domain digital SI cancellation approach is proposed to cancel the transmitter and receiver phase noises along with the incoming SI signal, without estimating either the SI channel response or the phase noise associated coefficients. For proofof-concept evaluation, simulations are performed on orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)-modulated signals of 20 MHz bandwidth with 16 QAM constellations to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. It is demonstrated that the proposed approach provides at least 3 dB improvement on the SI cancellation capability and at least 5 dB increase on the interference tolerance over the conventional cancellation approach that uses the frequency domain SI channel estimation.

Recent works have demonstrated the feasibility and potential of full-duplex (FD) wireless systems to double the spectral efficiency of half-duplex (HD) systems. Self-interference (SI) cancellation is the key to FD communication and the residual SI is the major factor determining the performance of an FD radio. This paper presents a novel frequency domain based approach, for the reconstruction of SI signal in digital domain. Unlike the existing time domain reconstruction approach, which requires convolution, the proposed approach is simple and uses FFT processing for SI signal reconstruction. By means of computational complexity evaluation, it is shown that the proposed reconstruction approach offers 61% reduction in the floating point operations required to reconstruct SI signal. Furthermore, via detailed simulations on the performance of digital SI cancellation under fading channels, it is demonstrated that the SI suppression achieved with the proposed approach is not only comparable to existing approach, but with frequency domain SI channel estimates, it can offer 5-7 dB better cancellation under highly frequency selective fading conditions, suggesting its suitability for long range transmission.

In full duplex (FD), which improves frequency efficiency and achieves flexible resource assignment between the uplink and downlink, self-interference (SI) from a transmitter should be suppressed by using antenna isolation, an analog SI canceler, and digital SI canceler (DSIC) to a level such that the data or control channel satisfies the required block error rate (BLER). This paper proposes an alternately iterative DSIC (AI-DSIC) structure for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) using FD. We first present the required SI suppression level considering SI, quantization noise of an analog-to-digital converter, and nonlinear distortions of a power amplifier and RF receiver circuitries for a direct conversion transceiver using FD. Then, we propose an AI-DSIC structure that iterates alternately the generation of the SI estimate, the downlink symbol estimate, and removal of each from the received signal in the downlink including SI. We investigate the average BLER performance of the AI-DSIC for OFDM using FD based on link-level simulations under the condition that the derived required signal-to-SI ratio is satisfied.

Nonlinear self-interference (SI) cancellation is essential for mitigating the impact of transmitter-side nonlinearity on overall SI cancellation performance in flexible duplex systems, including in-band full-duplex (IBFD) and sub-band full-duplex (SBFD). Digital SI cancellation (SIC) must address the nonlinearity in the power amplifier (PA) and the in-phase/quadrature-phase (IQ) imbalance from up/down converters at the base station (BS), in addition to analog SIC. In environments with rich signal reflection paths, however, the required number of delayed taps for time-domain nonlinear SI cancellation increases exponentially with the number of multipaths, leading to excessive complexity. This paper introduces a novel, low-complexity, frequency domain nonlinear SIC, suitable for flexible duplex systems with multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) configurations. The key approach involves decomposing nonlinear SI into a nonlinear basis and categorizing them based on their effectiveness across any flexible duplex setting. The proposed algorithm is founded on our analytical results of intermodulation distortion (IMD) in the frequency domain and utilizes a specialized pilot sequence. This algorithm is directly applicable to orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) multi-carrier systems and offers lower complexity than conventional digital SIC methods. Additionally, we assess the impact of the proposed SIC on flexible duplex systems through system-level simulation (SLS) using 3D ray-tracing and proof-of-concept (PoC) measurement.

To improve the throughput of underwater acoustic (UWA) networking, the In-band full-duplex (IBFD) communication is one of the most vital pieces of research. The major drawback of IBFD-UWA communication is Self-Interference (SI). This paper presents a digital SI cancellation algorithm for asynchronous IBFD-UWA communication system. We focus on two issues: one is asynchronous communication dissimilar to IBFD radio communication, the other is nonlinear distortion caused by power amplifier (PA). First, we discuss asynchronous IBFD-UWA signal model with the nonlinear distortion of PA. Then, we design a scheme for asynchronous IBFD-UWA communication utilizing the non-overlapping region between SI and intended signal to estimate the nonlinear SI channel. To cancel the nonlinear distortion caused by PA, we propose an Over-Parameterization based Recursive Least Squares (RLS) algorithm (OPRLS) to estimate the nonlinear SI channel. Furthermore, we present the OPRLS with a sparse constraint to estimate the SI channel, which reduces the requirement of the length of the non-overlapping region. Finally, we verify our concept through simulation and the pool experiment. Results demonstrate that the proposed digital SI cancellation scheme can cancel SI efficiently.

In the communication mechanism of co-time co-frequency full-duplex (CCFD), digital self-interference cancellation (SIC) is used for suppressing residual self-interference (SI) after antenna and radio frequency (RF) SICs, as well as low-power multipath SI. In this study, the CCFD LTE verification experiment is presented, which adopts digital SIC with the SI signal reconstructed in frequency domain. For the multipath Rayleigh SI channel, the expression of digital SIC capability is derived and the relationship among the channel estimation error, the received SI power, and digital SIC capability is analyzed. Experimental results show that the digital SIC ability is 31.2 dB for a 20 MHz 16QAM modulated LTE SI signal with frequency centered at 2.6 GHz and the interference-to-noise ratio of 40 dB.

Mitigating self-interference (SI) is vital for advancing simultaneous transmit and receive (STAR) systems. The noise and linearity of the canceller impose limitations on SI power handling. This article proposes a novel dual-path SI cancelling scheme for high-power SI handling. The proposed approach breaks self-interference cancellation (SIC) tradeoffs between operating frequency, SI power handling, and canceller noise/distortion by using a frequency-translated (FT) SI canceller and an auxiliary FT noise-cancelling (NC) path that cancels the noise/distortion from the primary canceller. This approach can work well for both full-duplex (FD) and frequency-division duplex (FDD) schemes. The 65-nm CMOS implementation achieves <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\sim$</tex-math> </inline-formula> 45-dB SIC for 12-dBm receiver (RX) SI peak power (9-dBm avg.) with only 4-dB noise figure (NF) degradation and 207-mW power consumption at 600 MHz. The SIC approach enables a blocker-1 dB with respect to SI of <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$&gt;$</tex-math> </inline-formula> 16 dBm (8 <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\times$</tex-math> </inline-formula> higher than prior work) while operating from 0.5 to 1.3 GHz. Therefore, this implementation can support watt-level SI power handling with transmitter (TX)–RX isolation <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$&gt;$</tex-math> </inline-formula> 15 dB. This is demonstrated through measurements that show 30-dBm TX power handling with 22-dB initial isolation from the circulator.

We investigate an amplify-and-forward (AF) full-duplex (FD) relay system, where the FD incurred self-interference (SI), through partial cancelation at relay, is treated as a useful source at destination to enhance degree of freedom in signal detection, while reducing the signal processing cost of SI cancelation. An independent component analysis (ICA) based equalization structure is employed at destination to separate and detect the desired signal from the residual SI in a semi-blind way. The mode of SI cancelation at relay is chosen adaptively based on the threshold of signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) at relay. The proposed FD relay system not only features reduced signal processing cost of SI cancelation, but also achieves much higher energy efficiency (EE) than conventional FD relay systems where SI is canceled as much as possible. Also, the proposed system enables full resource utilization via consecutive data transmission at all time and the same frequency, leading to much higher throughput and EE than the conventional time-splitting and power-splitting based SI recycling approaches that occupy partial resources. Last but not least, the proposed system demonstrates a bit error rate (BER) performance that is robust against a wide range of SI and close to the ideal case with perfect channel state information (CSI) and perfect SI cancelation, while requiring no training sequence for estimation of any channel involved.

This paper describes a single channel, full-duplex wireless communication system that can receive and transmit at the same frequency band in the same time. Recent researches have proved the feasibility of full duplex wireless communication in practice, by canceling the self-interference signal to obtain the desired signal. In this paper, we propose an adaptive digital self-interference cancellation technique, which combines with existing antenna separation and balun based cancellation to achieve the quantity of self-interference cancellation needed for full-duplex system. An adaptive filter based on least mean square (LMS) algorithm is applied to track amplitude and phase variations to produce an expected cancellation signal, after the initial delay and frequency offsets are compensated. Our simulation results display that the adaptive digital interference cancellation scheme has fairly desirable self-interference signal cancellation performance.

Analog self-interference(SI) cancellation in full-duplex systems can be implemented with either fixed or adjustable delay arrangement. In this paper, the theoretical residual SI power in multi-tap analog SI cancellation with arbitrary time delay arrangement for each tap is derived, and the cancellation performance with fixed and optimal adjustable delay arrangement are compared by simulations. The influence of the bandwidth, the carrier frequency, the number of taps and the maximum delay of the SI channel on the cancellation performance are investigated. In consideration of the complexity of the optimal method, a novel algorithm for adjustable delay arrangement is proposed based on the cross-correlation of the reference signal and the SI signal.

Simultaneous bidirectional transmission and recep- tion of signals on a single channel in a full duplex (FD) system is gaining increased attention from both academia and industry. Recent advances in radio transceiver design have been able to minimize the self interference (SI) to a great extent making realization of a FD transceiver possible. For FD deployment in a multi-cell environment, minimizing SI is not sufficient due to the presence of a complex array of network-wide interference. This paper investigates the critical deployment challenges for a dense urban FD multi- cell network and provides solutions for successful deployment of FD cellular networks. Extensive simulation results show that the proposed user selection and power control algorithms are able to increase the FD performance gain by more than 80% when compared to the traditional half duplex (HD) counterpart.

Residual self-interference (SI) cancellation in the digital baseband is an important problem in full-duplex (FD) communication systems. In this paper, we propose a new technique for estimating the SI and communication channels in a FD communication system, which is inspired from superimposed signaling. In our proposed technique, we add a constant real number to each constellation point of a conventional modulation constellation to yield asymmetric shifted modulation constellations with respect to the origin. We show mathematically that such constellations can be used for bandwidth efficient channel estimation without ambiguity. We propose an expectation maximization (EM) estimator for use with the asymmetric shifted modulation constellations. We derive a closed-form lower bound for the mean square error (MSE) of the channel estimation error, which allows us to find the minimum shift energy needed for accurate channel estimation in a given FD communication system. The simulation results show that the proposed technique outperforms the data-aided channel estimation method, under the condition that the pilots use the same extra energy as the shift, both in terms of MSE of channel estimation error and bit error rate. The proposed technique is also robust to an increasing power of the SI signal.

In this paper, a novel communication scheme that combines beamforming, energy harvesting, and cooperative non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) system is introduced. In the proposed scheme, NOMA is first combined with beamforming to serve more than one user in each beamforming vector. Later, simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) technique is exploited to encourage the strong user to relay the weak user's information messages in full-duplex (FD) manner. However, one major drawback of FD communications is the self-interference (SI) signal due to signal leakage from terminal's output to the input. Three different cases are adopted. In the first case, the SI signal is assumed to be fully cancelled at the strong user using SI cancellation techniques. In the second case, SI is only cancelled at the information decoding circuits, while being harvested in the energy harvester to provide extra energy. The third case investigates the impact of imperfect SI cancellation on system performance is investigated. It is proved that introducing SWIPT doesn't only motivate users to collaborate, but also mitigates the impact of the SI signal. In addition, the problem of total sum rate maximisation is formulated and solved locally by means of two-step difference of convex functions (DC)-based procedure. Furthermore, the outage probability of both weak and strong user is derived and provided in closed-form expressions. Numerical simulations are presented to illustrate the sum rate gain of the proposed scheme if compared with existing schemes, and to verify the derived formulas.