RF System

What Is an RF System?

Modern RF systems consist of high-frequency analog electronics (the front end) and adaptive digital algorithms.

One of the primary challenges in RF system design is reducing the overall area, power, and cost for RF front ends—generally wireless transmitters and transceivers. For this reason, smart RF system design relies heavily on compensating DSP algorithms, adaptive filtering, and control logic to optimize these performance factors and to calibrate and compensate for RF impairments.

Algorithms such as digital pre-distortion (DPD), automatic gain control (AGC), beamforming, and adaptive filtering are an integral part of today’s communications and radar systems. RF system algorithms, such as the ones required by emerging 5G systems, need to be designed together with models of the antenna front end, analog/mixed-signal components, and the communication channel. Rapid system-level simulation is an essential requirement to efficiently explore design tradeoffs.

MATLAB® and Simulink® provide the required tools for supporting all the RF system design tasks, from system analysis to algorithm development and lab prototyping. Modeling and simulating RF, analog, and digital systems together enables faster development and easier debugging. The simulation speed achieved with circuit envelope simulation is the key enabler to managing the complexity of today’s wireless systems.

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See also: wireless communications, beamforming, LTE Toolbox, WLAN Toolbox, Communications Toolbox, Phased Array System Toolbox, Antenna Toolbox, software-defined radio, FPGA design and codesign, MATLAB, Simulink, OFDM, massive MIMO, channel model, 5G wireless technology, mixed-signal systems, ultra-wideband, How do radars work?, link budget