Sparse Multiband Signal Acquisition Receiver with Co-prime Sampling

Cognitive radio (CR) requires spectrum sensing over a broad frequency band. One of the crucial tasks in CR is to sample wideband signal at high sampling rate. In this paper, we propose an acquisition receiver with co-prime sampling technique for wideband sparse signals, which occupy a small part of band range. In this proposed acquisition receiver, we use two low speed analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) to capture a common sparse multiband signal, whose band locations are unknown. The two ADCs are synchronously clocked at co-prime sampling rates. The obtained samples are re-sequenced into a group of uniform sequences with low rate. We derive the mathematical model for the receiver in the frequency domain and present its signal reconstruction algorithm. Compared to the existing sub-Nyquist sampling techniques, such as multi-coset sampling and modulated wideband converter, the proposed approach has a simple system architecture and can be implemented with only two samplers. Experimental results are reported to demonstrate the feasibility and advantage of the proposed model. For sparse multiband signal with unknown spectral support, the proposed system requires a sampling rate much lower than Nyquist rate, while produces satisfactory reconstruction.