Low-Resolution Quantizer’s Output Signal Analysis in Presence of Multipath Fading Effects

The research performed the statistical analysis of nonlinear distortions caused by the ADC unit in presence of the additive white Gaussian noise and the multipath fading effects described with the Nakagami-m envelope distribution. The ADC assumes to operate within the arbitrary input process levels including the overload situation that is being resolved with either the saturation or the reset. For all the assumed cases the input and output process’ probability density functions were derived and the expressions for arbitrary order moments were obtained and applied for output variance calculation. The effects of energy suppression, induced by the quantizer’s nonlinearity are analyzed as a function of its bit-resolution, input process root-mean-square level and fading severity. The obtained results can be helpful for various problems of communication quality calculation, for instance for the problem of white space energy base detection in cognitive radio networks.