On adjacent channel co-existence with receiver nonlinearity

RF front-end nonlinearity makes receivers vulnerable to adjacent channel interference that significantly impacts receiver performance. Next generation (5G) wireless networks will see unprecedented diversity across receiver and radio technologies accessing the same band of spectrum in spatio-temporal vicinity. Ensuring adjacent channel co-existence is of prime importance for successful deployment and operations of 5G systems. In this paper, we develop a fundamental framework to analyze the adjacent channel co-existence by quantifying the impact of receiver RF front-end nonlinearity on performance. We develop novel tractable discrete representation of third order intermodulation, cross-modulation, and compressive distortion of the receiver front end to describe adjacent channel interference using unit basis vectors. We further analyze the impact of nonlinearity on receiver performance by evaluating the limits on achievable rate accounting for RF front-end nonlinearity. Based on this analysis we provide a framework to compare disparate receivers by forming generalized metrics. We then use these metrics to quantify the performance detriment for a reference input spectrum. We illustrate the importance of the proposed frameworks and the ensuing rate analysis for reference inputs for adjacent channel co-existence analysis and quantifying receiver performance.