Understanding Energy Efficiency and Interference Tolerance in Millimeter Wave Receivers

TL;DR

This paper develops a mathematical framework to analyze the trade-offs between power efficiency, interference tolerance, and performance in millimeter wave receivers, supported by simulations and circuit analysis.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive model for mmWave front-end performance under interference, highlighting design trade-offs and proposing improvements for low-power, interference-robust receivers.

Findings

Low-power designs have limited dynamic range, increasing interference vulnerability.

Trade-offs between power consumption and interference tolerance are fundamental.

Design enhancements can improve interference robustness in practical mmWave systems.

Abstract

Power consumption is a key challenge in millimeter wave (mmWave) receiver front-ends, due to the need to support high dimensional antenna arrays at wide bandwidths. Recently, there has been considerable work in developing low-power front-ends, often based on low-resolution ADCs and low-power mixers. A critical but less studied consequence of such designs is the relatively low-dynamic range which in turn exposes the receiver to adjacent carrier interference and blockers. This paper provides a general mathematical framework for analyzing the performance of mmWave front-ends in the presence of out-of-band interference. The goal is to elucidate the fundamental trade-off of power consumption, interference tolerance and in-band performance. The analysis is combined with detailed network simulations in cellular systems with multiple carriers, as well as detailed circuit simulations of key components at 140 GHz. The analysis reveals critical bottlenecks for low-power interference robustness and suggests designs enhancements for use in practical systems.