amplifier and filter solutions for sharp impluse signal

Jun 03, 2009 1 Replies

We are making a baseband communication circuit. NRZ wave shape is used directly to implement the communication without carrier and modulation. Because of the particularity of the communication channel, square wave will become sharp impulse on its rising and falling edge with severe attenuation.



We plan to build a circuit to amplify the impulse and then acquire the original square wave shape through a Hysteretic Comparator (or Schmidt Trigger). Actually, the amplitude of the impulse is slightly higher than noise. Hence, miscarriage of justice is frequently happened due to the noise. As a result, maybe a filter is needed to improve the SNR. However, the effect of normal filter circuit is limited because the spectrum of the noise in our system is close to the impulse.



Does anyone have better solutions? Thanks in advance!


Why do you post the same message again ?

It would help a lot if you could specify more details on the physics of the comm channel.

This is indeed the trickiest part : if the noise distribution is not stable, ( i.e : variable noise level vs frequency band ) then the SNR will be variable - and so the error rate.

There is a way to improve such situation, called "spread spectrum" which enlarges the signal spectrum over the channel bandwidth, this gives a large redundancy to overcome severe interference, and greatly helps to lower the error probability.

Another technique is used for channels having time-variant impulse responses, which is a consequence of the constantly changing physical characteristics of the channel.

Does it sounds like the problem you are facing ?

Yes, whatever will be the choice, you still keep the option to improve the overall transfer by implementing a convenient error detection/correction code at the software level.

However I doubt that NRZ is a good choice in this tricky case, you may have to use a convenient modulation w/ matched filters.

Anyway such subjects are well covered - in depth - in books that I strongly suggest you to read :

1- "Digital Communications - John Proakis" (the Bible) 2- "Digital And Analog Communication Systems - Leon Couch"

HTH

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