Subsystems and Systems

RSS

System-level analysis has moved from its former position at the end of the design process to the forefront where it can do the most good, at the least cost, with the least design disruption. Industry use of system-level analysis has lagged behind the level of “mainstream” high-frequency circuit design tool usage. It’s not surprising that many designers have created their own spreadsheets in Excel to perform these analyses. While many designers will no doubt continue to use spreadsheets for system-level analysis, their inherent limitations can prove costly.

This article focuses on the physical layer (“Layer 1”) characteristics of the LTE uplink, describing the new Single-carrier Frequency Division Multiple Access (SC-FDMA) transmission scheme and some of the measurements associated with it. Understanding the details of this new transmission scheme and measurements is a vital step towards developing LTE UE designs and getting them to market.

This paper discusses the advantages of a dedicated system-level tool over spreadsheets.