Alien interference removal in vectored DSL

• US 8,619,843 B2
• Filed: 08/08/2009
• Issued: 12/31/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 08/13/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Ikanos Communications Incorporated (Qualcomm, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Ikanos Communications Incorporated (Qualcomm, Inc.)
• Inventors: Sands, Nicholas P., Fisher, Kevin D.
• Primary Examiner(s): FILE, ERIN M
• Application Number:
  US13/058,477
• Publication Number:
  US 20110142111A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,606 Days
• Field of Search: 375/222
• US Class Current: 375/222
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 3/32 Reducing cross-talk, e.g. by compensating
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 3/487 Testing crosstalk effects
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 11/062 using different frequency bands for speech and other data
• CPC Class Codes: Y02D 30/50 in wire-line communication networks, e.g. low power modes or reduced link rate

Abstract

A vectored DSL system reduces or eliminates correlated alien interference in active DSL lines in the vectored system by collecting pseudo signals from inactive lines that do not carry upstream DSL transmissions and/or from common-mode voltage signals from active lines. The collected pseudo signals contain in-domain interference, such as FEXT interference from the active DSL lines in the vectored system, and correlated alien interference. After removing the in-domain interference from the pseudo signals, the remaining alien interference data can be used to generate FEXT cancellation coefficients or the like that are used in DSL vectoring to remove the correlated alien interference from upstream DSL user signals from the active DSL lines. The generated FEXT cancellation coefficients are used in a manner analogous to in-domain FEXT data collected from the active lines during training, tracking, etc. The vectored DSL system can include modems coupled to a private vectoring data routing apparatus to one or more vectoring modules The vectoring modules can employ vector processors that include processing units configured to process collected user data on the basis of all modems'"'"' data for a given DSL tone grouping, thus removing FEXT effects from the user data and returning vectored user data to the modems using the routing apparatus, which can be a specialized data transmission network utilizing one or more vector routers.

Claims

1. A vectored digital subscriber line (DSL) system comprising:

a plurality of active lines, wherein each active line comprises;

a downstream-end modem coupled to an upstream-end modem with a twisted copper pair;

wherein each active line is configured to use an upstream DSL frequency set to transmit upstream DSL user signals from the downstream-end modem to the upstream-end modem;

one or more pseudo signal source lines, wherein a pseudo signal comprises in-domain interference and correlated alien interference, each pseudo signal source line comprising at least one of the following;

an inactive line, wherein the inactive line comprises;

a twisted copper pair coupled to an upstream-end modem;

wherein no upstream DSL user signals are sent to the upstream-end modern using the upstream DSL frequency set;

a common-mode voltage signal source line comprising a twisted copper pair coupled to an upstream-end modem, wherein the upstream-end modem comprises;

an analog front-end comprising a hybrid configured to generate a common-mode voltage signal from transmissions on the common-mode voltage signal source line received by the upstream-end modem; and

a fast Fourier transform unit for generating pseudo signals derived from the generated common-mode voltage signals;

wherein the common-mode voltage signal source line is one of the following;

one of the plurality of active lines;

or a line other than one of the plurality of active lines;

a vectoring unit coupled to the upstream-end modems of the plurality of active lines and to the upstream-end modem of the inactive line, wherein the vectoring unit is configured to;

collect upstream DSL user signals received by the upstream-end modems of the plurality of active lines;

collect pseudo signals from one or more of the pseudo signal source lines;

remove the in-domain interference from the collected pseudo signals and generate alien interference data; and

perform vectoring of DSL transmissions on the plurality of active lines using the collected upstream DSL user data and the alien interference data.

2. The system of claim 1 wherein the correlated alien interference comprises interference from one or more of the following:

radio frequency interference (RFI), electrical noise, crosstalk interference from alien DSL lines.

3. The system of claim 2 wherein the upstream-end modem of each inactive line comprises a receive amplifier, a front-end filter, an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) having a clock slaved to a phase-locked sampling phase from one of the upstream-end modems of the plurality of active lines, and one or more FFT blocks.

4. The system of claim 3 wherein the vectoring unit comprises a de-correlating processor configured to:

collect the upstream DSL user signals and the pseudo signals; and

generate de-correlated signals corresponding to the collected upstream DSL user signals.

5. The system of claim 4 further comprising:

one or more line cards comprising;

the upstream-end modems of the active lines and any inactive line upstream-end modem; and

at least one line card vector router on each line card, each line card vector router being coupled to any upstream-end modems on the same line card;

wherein the vectoring unit comprises a vectoring module comprising;

a vectoring unit vector router coupled to at least one line card vector router; and

a plurality of vector processors coupled to the vectoring unit vector router;

wherein each vector processor is configured to perform DSL vectoring for a specified subset of the upstream DSL frequency set for active line DSL transmissions using the collected upstream DSL user signals and the alien interference data.

6. The system of claim 5 wherein performing vectoring of active line DSL transmissions comprises generating one or more alien interference columns in a FEXT coefficient vectoring matrix, wherein each alien interference column comprises coefficients reflecting the effect of the correlated alien interference on in-domain upstream DSL signals.

7. A method for performing DSL vectoring in a DSL system having a plurality of active lines, the method comprising:

transmitting test signal input signals on the plurality of active lines;

collecting test signal output signals from the active lines;

collecting pseudo signals comprising in-domain interference and correlated alien interference;

removing in-domain interference from the collected pseudo signals to generate alien interference data; and

performing DSL vectoring of the plurality of active lines using the alien interference data;

wherein each active line comprises a downstream-end modem coupled to an upstream-end modem with a twisted copper pair, wherein each active line is configured to use an upstream DSL frequency set to transmit upstream DSL user signals from the downstream-end modem to the upstream-end modem;

further wherein pseudo signals are collected from at least one of the following;

one or more inactive DSL lines, wherein each inactive DSL line comprises a twisted copper pair coupled to an upstream-end modem, wherein no upstream DSL user signals are sent to the upstream-end modem using the upstream DSL frequency set;

one or more common-mode voltage signal source lines, wherein each common-mode voltage signal source line comprises a twisted copper pair coupled to an upstream-end modem.

8. The method of claim 7 wherein removing in-domain interference from the collected pseudo signals comprises using the collected test signal output signals to remove in-domain active line FEXT interference from the pseudo signals to generate the alien interference data.

9. The method of claim 8 wherein performing DSL vectoring of the plurality of active lines comprises using the alien interference data to generate FEXT cancellation coefficients and using the generated FEXT cancellation coefficients to reduce or remove correlated alien interference affecting upstream DSL transmissions on the plurality of active lines.

10. The method of claim 9 wherein performing DSL vectoring of the plurality of active lines comprises generating de-correlated signals corresponding to the upstream DSL user signals.

11. The method of claim 10 wherein performing DSL vectoring of the plurality of active lines comprises performing vectoring in a vectoring unit coupled to a plurality of line cards on which the moderns of the plurality of active lines and the one or more upstream-end moderns from which pseudo signals are collected.

12. The method of claim 11 wherein the vectoring unit performs vectoring of active line DSL transmissions using the collected upstream DSL user data and the alien interference data comprises generating an alien interference effects row or column in a TEXT coefficient matrix used in vectoring.

13. The method of claim 12 wherein the correlated alien interference comprises interference from one or more of the following:

radio frequency interference (RFI), motor noise, electrical noise, crosstalk interference from alien DSL lines.

14. The method of claim 13 wherein transmitting test signals on the plurality of active lines comprises sending at least one of the following:

training data signals, tracking data signals.