METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR SIGNAL FILTERING AND FOR IMPROVING PROPERTIES OF ELECTRONIC DEVICES

摘要

The present invention relates to nonlinear signal processing, and, in particular, to adaptive nonlinear filtering of real-, complex-, and vector-valued signals utilizing analog Nonlinear Differential Limiters (NDLs), and to adaptive real-time signal conditioning, processing, analysis, quantification, comparison, and control. More generally, this invention relates to methods, processes and apparatus for real-time measuring and analysis of variables, and to generic measurement systems and processes. This invention also relates to methods and corresponding apparatus for measuring which extend to different applications and provide results other than instantaneous values of variables. The invention further relates to post-processing analysis of measured variables and to statistical analysis. The NDL-based filtering method and apparatus enable improvements in the overall properties of electronic devices including, but not limited to, improvements in performance, reduction in size, weight, cost, and power consumption, and, in particular for wireless devices, NDLs enable improvements in spectrum usage efficiency.

主权项

1. An apparatus for analog-to-digital conversion capable of converting an input signal into an output signal, wherein said input signal is a physical signal and wherein said output signal is a quantized representation of said input signal, the apparatus comprising a quantizer and a nonlinear loop filter, wherein said nonlinear loop filter comprises a nonlinear filtering stage characterized by a bandwidth and transforming a nonlinear filtering stage input signal into a nonlinear filtering stage output signal, and wherein said bandwidth is a non-increasing function of a magnitude of a difference between said nonlinear filtering stage input signal and a feedback of said nonlinear filtering stage output signal.