Advanced methods for I/Q imbalance compensation in communication receivers

TLDR

I/Q signal processing is ubiquitous in modern communication receivers, yet amplitude and phase mismatches between the I and Q branches inevitably produce image‑frequency interference that degrades performance. This work analyzes imbalanced I/Q receivers and introduces novel baseband digital compensation techniques to mitigate the resulting image interference. A simple adaptive interference‑canceller–based structure is derived, and more sophisticated blind source separation methods are proposed, with theoretical performance analysis and supporting simulation results. The results show that the proposed compensation schemes can effectively cancel I/Q imbalance during normal operation, even under rapidly changing conditions, provided a linear imbalance model is valid.

Abstract

I/Q signal processing is widely utilized in today's communication receivers. However, all I/Q processing receiver structures, such as the low-IF receiver, face a common problem of matching the amplitudes and phases of the I and Q branches. In practice, imbalances are unavoidable in the analog front-end, which results in finite and usually insufficient rejection of the image frequency band. This causes the image signal to appear as interference on top of the desired signal. We carry out general signal analysis of an imbalanced I/Q processing receiver and propose novel methods for I/Q imbalance compensation using baseband digital signal processing. A simple structure for compensation is derived, based on a traditional adaptive interference canceller. Improved image rejection can also be obtained by using more advanced blind source separation techniques. Theoretical analysis of the performance of the proposed imbalance compensation structures is presented. In addition, some simulation results are provided in order to further evaluate the performance of the proposed methods. The results indicate that the I/Q imbalance can be effectively compensated during the normal operation of the receiver even in the rapidly changing case, as long as a linear system model for the imbalance is valid.