Beamforming OFDM Performance Under Joint Phase Noise and I/Q Imbalance

Phase noise (PHN) and in-phase/quadrature (I/Q) imbalance are two major radio-frequency (RF) impairments in direct-conversion wireless transceivers. Beamforming and orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) schemes have been adopted in broadband wireless standards due to their significant performance gains. In this paper, we analyze the impact of joint I/Q imbalance and PHN on beamforming OFDM direct-conversion transceivers. We derive an exact normalized-mean-square-error expression (NMSE) and examine several special and asymptotic cases to gain insights. One such insight is that, asymptotically, for both large signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and the beamforming array size, the PHN and I/Q imbalance effects become decoupled.