Verification of Receiver Equalization by Integrating Dataflow Simulation and Physical Channels

Abstract

This thesis combines Keysight's SystemVue software with a Vector Signal Analyzer (VSA) and Vector Signal Generator (VSG) to test receiver equalization schemes over physical channels. The testing setup, "Equalization Verification," is intended to be able to evaluate any equalization scheme over any physical channel, and a decision-directed feed-forward LMS equalizer is used as an example. The decision-directed feed-forward LMS equalizer is shown to decrease the BER from 10-2 to 10-3 (average of all trials) over a CAT7 and CAT6A cable, both simulated and physical, for 1GHz and 2GHz carrier, and 80MHz data rate. A wireless channel, 2.4GHz Dipole Antenna, is also tested to show that the addition of the equalization scheme decreases BER from 10-5 to less than 10-5. Then the simulation and equalization parameters (LMS step size, PRBS, etc.) are changed to further verify the equalization scheme. The simulated channel BER results do not always match the physical channel BER results, but the equalization scheme does decrease BER for both wired and wireless channels. Then transistor-based equalization model is created using both HDL SystemVue components and blocks easily implemented by transistors. The model is then verified using HDL, Spice, and SystemVue simulation. Overall this thesis accomplishes its goal of creating a testing setup, Equalization Verification, to show that adding a given simulated equalization scheme in SystemVue can improve the quality of the link, by decreasing BER by at least an order of magnitude, over a specific physical channel.