Sub-Nyquist 1 bit sampling system for sparse multiband signals

Efficient sampling of wideband analog signals is a hard problem because their Nyquist rates may exceed the specifications of the analog-to-digital converters by magnitude. Modulated Wideband Converter (MWC) is a known method to sample sparse multiband signals below the Nyquist rate and the precision recovery relies on high precision quantization of samples which may take a great bit-budget. This paper proposes an alternative system that optimizes space utilization by applying comparator in sub-Nyquist sampling system. The system first multiplies the signal by a bank of periodic waveforms, and then it performs lowpass filtering, sampling and quantization through the comparator which just keeps the sign information. And we introduce a corresponding algorithm for perfect recovery. The primary design goals are efficient hardware implementation and low bit-budget. We compare our system with MWC to prove its advantages in condition of fixed bit-budget, particularly in low levels of input signal to noise ratio.