I/Q Imbalance in Multiple Beamforming Transceivers: SINR Analysis and Digital Baseband Compensation

In this paper, we start by investigating the impact of joint transmit-receive I/Q imbalance on the performance of direct-conversion beamforming OFDM transceivers. We derive a new analytical expression for the average subcarrier SINR of the I/Q imbalance-ignorant beamformer in terms of the I/Q imbalance level at both the transmit and receive sides, the size of the beamforming array, and the input SNR level. This expression motivates the need for I/Q imbalance compensation and provides valuable design insights when examining several special and limiting cases. Next, we derive the throughput-maximizing multiple beamforming transmit/receive coefficients under a general system model with an asymmetric frequency-dependent (FD) joint transmit-receive I/Q imbalance. In addition, we propose a low-complexity pilot-aided scheme for the estimation of the channel and I/Q imbalance parameters. Our simulation results demonstrate that the proposed generalized multiple beamforming scheme is highly effective in mitigating I/Q imbalance effects at practical complexity levels.