Analog-to-digital converter effects on orthogonal frequency division multiplexing performance

The effects of circuit design related errors of analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) on orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system performance are investigated in MATLAB environment. A behavioral model of a dual pipeline ADC is added to Long Term Evolution (LTE) network simulation code, which includes an OFDM block. Resolution, channel to channel gain mismatch, and stage amplifier gain error, which causes integral nonlinearity (INL) errors, are used as ADC error mechanisms. The effects of these mechanisms on error vector magnitude (EVM) and bit error rate (BER) are demonstrated. At 34 dB energy per bit to noise power spectral density ratio (E_b/N₀), an 8-bit ADC increases the BER by 198% with respect to a 14-bit ADC, 1% stage amplifier gain error increases the BER by 96% with respect to the case with no error and 1% channel to channel mismatch increases the BER by 38% with respect to no mismatch. This work quantifies the ADC effects on a specific but representative OFDM application.