On the optimization of ADC resolution in multi-antenna systems

The analog-to-digital converter (ADC) at the front end of a receiver not only affects the achievable communication rates but also the power consumption of the receiver. With higher resolution of the ADC, less quantization loss is incurred due to the conversion, leading to a higher communication rate, yet more power is dissipated by the ADC which increases the total energy consumption of the receiver. Such a trade-off is especially important for the energy-efficient design of a receiver with multiple antennas. We investigate the joint optimization of ADC resolutions in a multi-antenna system with perfect channel state information at the receiver. The formulated maximization problem of the bit per .louie metric is an integer programming for which we apply the particle swarm optimization (PSO) method to find near-optimal solutions with low complexity. Simulation results demonstrate the necessity for performing such optimizat ions, with improved energy-efficiency compared to the common design of using uniform ADC resolutions.