Quantization issues for the design of a 3rd-generation CDMA wireless handset transmitter

A full analysis is presented on quantization analysis for the reverse link transmitter chain in the third-generation IS-95, i.e., cdma2000 system. Of particular interest is how reverse link channels are scaled prior to subsequent quantization as a result of digital-to-analog conversion. Through analysis, two methods of quantization are proposed - fixed and adaptive. In addition, the impact of D/A converter nonlinearity on resultant signal-to-noise ratio is analyzed. Simulations are provided which show that adaptive quantization has a slight performance benefit over fixed methods in terms of ACPR.