Determining LO leakage and quadrature error parameters of an RF front end

A radio frequency integrated circuit, comprising:

• a software controlled digital circuit including a pseudo-noise generator for generating a pseudo-noise sequence and one or more adder circuits for adding the pseudo-noise sequence or a derivative of the pseudo-noise sequence to an in-phase and quadrature phase (I/Q) based user data signal;
• and
• a further digital circuit including an accumulator circuit to receive a transmitter signal and a receiver signal, wherein the transmitter signal is based on the I/Q based user data signal and wherein the receiver signal is based on the I/Q based user data signal,
• wherein the further digital circuit further includes one or more despreader circuits to despread the transmitter signal and the receiver signal using the pseudo-noise sequence to obtain a despreaded transmitter signal and a despreaded receiver signal;
• and
• at least one memory circuit comprising first software code which, when executed by one or more processors, generates channel characteristics of a transmission channel between a transmitter radio frequency front end and an observation receiver using the despreaded transmitter signal and the despreaded receiver signal as inputs.

A method for generating local oscillator leakage parameters and quadrature error parameters, the method comprising:

• generating a pseudo-noise sequence;
• inserting the pseudo-noise sequence or a derivative of the pseudo-noise sequence into a user data signal to obtain a transmitter signal;
• obtaining a despreaded transmitter signal from the transmitter signal using the pseudo-noise sequence;
• receiving an observation receiver signal, the observation receiver signal being based on the transmitter signal;
• obtaining a despreaded receiver signal from the observation receiver signal using the pseudo-noise sequence;
• and
• determining the local oscillator leakage parameters and the quadrature error parameters based on the transmitter signal, the despreaded transmitter signal, the observation receiver signal and the despreaded received signal.