Latency Performance Evaluation of RF Front-End Transceiver Architecture

A methodology of modelling and characterizing the latency contribution of front-end architectures to next-generation mobile networks is proposed and presented. An appropriate definition of this term for microwave engineering is given on the basis of a brief literature survey. Electromagnetic simulations and signal processing techniques are used to understand and formulate an analytical procedure to examine the latency contribution of wireless transceivers. Measurement results show that typical homodyne and six-port receiver architectures produce delays in the range of nanoseconds, which may be of significant interest for future ultra-high speed RF-interconnects (RF-I) and wireless massive data transfers whereas the overall latency target in 5G networks is in the range of milliseconds.