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Virginia Tech

The Effect of Receiver Nonlinearity and Nonlinearity Induced Interference on the Performance of Amplitude Modulated Signals

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

All wireless receivers have some degree of nonlinearity that can negatively impact performance. Two major effects from this nonlinearity are power compression, which leads to amplitude and phase distortions in the received signal, and desensitization caused by a high powered interfering signal at an adjacent channel. As the RF spectrum becomes more crowded, the interference caused by these adjacent signals will become a more significant problem for receiver design. Therefore, having bit and symbol error rate expressions that take the receiver nonlinearity into account will allow for determining the linearity requirements of a receiver. This thesis examines the modeling of the probability density functions of M-PAM and M-QAM signals through an AWGN channel taking into account the impact of receiver nonlinearity. A change of variables technique is used to provide a relationship between the pdf of these signals with a linear receiver and the pdf with a nonlinear receiver. Additionally, theoretical bit and symbol error rates are derived from the pdf expressions. Finally, this approach is extended by deriving pdf and error rate expressions for these signals when nearby blocking signals cause desensitization of the signal of interest. Matlab simulation shows that the derived expressions for a nonlinear receiver have the same accuracy as the accepted expressions for linear receivers.

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Master of Science
Level thesis:degree_level
masters
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
Electrical Engineering
Department dc:contributor.department
Electrical Engineering
Grantor dc:publisher
Virginia Tech
Year dc:date.issued
2018

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Moore, Natalie
Chair dc:contributor.committeechair
  • Reed, Jeffrey H.
Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember
  • Beex, Aloysius A.
  • Headley, William C.

Subjects

dc:subject × 8

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • In Copyright

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Dc Identifier Other
vt_gsexam:16847
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/84899

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
Virginia Tech
Base URL
vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Moore, Natalie. The Effect of Receiver Nonlinearity and Nonlinearity Induced Interference on the Performance of Amplitude Modulated Signals. masters thesis, Virginia Tech, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/84899