Method and apparatus for implementing signal quality metrics and antenna diversity switching control

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9544039-B2
Application number	US-201514920684-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Oct 22, 2015
Priority date	Jun 21, 2011
Publication date	Jan 10, 2017
Grant date	Jan 10, 2017

Abstract

A method for detecting the digital quality of a radio signal includes: receiving a radio signal including an analog modulated portion; digitally sampling an analog modulated portion of the radio signal to produce a plurality of samples; using a ratio between an average magnitude and an RMS magnitude of a block of the samples to compute an analog signal quality metric. Receivers that implement the method are also provided.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method comprising:
receiving a radio signal including an analog modulated portion;
digitally sampling an analog modulated portion of the radio signal to produce a plurality of samples; and
using a ratio between an average magnitude and an RMS magnitude of a block of the samples to compute an analog signal quality metric.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the radio signal further includes a digitally modulated portion and the block of samples spans about 1 OFDM symbol in the digitally modulated portion.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein the analog signal quality metric is determined using samples from 16 symbols.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the ratio is raised to a power p such that subsequent averaging of analog signal quality metric values over time is not biased from the nominal threshold of about 0.5.

5. The method of claim 4 , wherein the value of p is 8.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the analog signal quality metric (ASQM) is calculated as:

ASQM
=

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8

where x k is the k th sample of the block of samples, and k is sample index from 0 to K−1.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein the analog signal quality metric has a value in a range of 0 to 1.

8. The method of claim 1 , further comprising:
using the analog signal quality metric to select one or more antenna elements to be connected to a receiver input.

9. An apparatus comprising:
a radio receiver including an input for receiving a radio signal having an analog modulated portion; and a processor for digitally sampling the analog modulated portion to produce a plurality of samples, and using a ratio between an average magnitude and an RMS magnitude of a block of the samples to compute an analog signal quality metric.

10. The apparatus of claim 9 , further comprising:
a plurality of antenna elements for receiving the radio signal; and
a switch for connecting one or more of the antenna elements to the receiver input in response to the analog signal quality metric.

11. The apparatus of claim 9 , wherein the radio signal further includes a digitally modulated portion and the block of samples spans about 1 OFDM symbol in the digitally modulated portion.

12. The apparatus of claim 11 , wherein the analog signal quality metric is determined using samples from 16 symbols.

13. The apparatus of claim 9 , wherein the ratio is raised to a power p such that subsequent averaging of analog signal quality metric values over time is not biased from the nominal threshold of about 0.5.

14. The apparatus of claim 13 , wherein the value of p is 8.

15. The apparatus of claim 9 , wherein the analog si

Assignees

• Ibiquity Digital Corp

Inventors

• Kroeger Brian W
• Peyla Paul J

Classifications

• H04B17/309

  Measuring or estimating channel quality parameters · CPC title

• H04B17/29

  Performance testing · CPC title

• H04H2201/20

  digital audio broadcasting [DAB] · CPC title

• H04H2201/12

  digital radio mondiale [DRM] · CPC title

• H04L27/2678

  using cyclostationarities, e.g. cyclic prefix or postfix · CPC title