Introduction to high frequency lter

by Nam Tran Pham

Robert Bosch Center for Micro and Power Electronics Reutlingen November 19, 2012

Abstract
In the modern communication system, the higher data rate and transmission speed are required. As the result, the frequency of the signal becomes higher. The traditional method to design a lter becomes unsuitable to handle high frequency signal. This short study is written with the intention to give the reader a small aspect of designing signal lter for high frequency system. Some basic understanding about high frequency signal and the method to handle the problem along with samples are discussed.

Contents
Table of contents List of gures Abbreviation 1 Introduction to signal lter 1.1 Fundamental types of lters . . . . 1.1.1 Low pass lter . . . . . . . . 1.1.2 High pass lter . . . . . . . 1.1.3 Band pass lter . . . . . . . 1.1.4 Notch lter . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Design of fundamental lter . . . . 1.2.1 Design requirement of lter 1.2.2 Filter realization . . . . . . 1.2.3 Fundamental lter overview I II III 1 1 1 2 2 3 4 4 4 5 6 6 6 8 9 12 12 12 14 15

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2 High frequency signal lter 2.1 Parameters of high frequency signal and system . 2.1.1 Wavelength of high frequency signal . . . . 2.1.2 Reexion and scattering parameter models 2.2 Filter with micro strip lines . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 IQ-Modulation for Transmitter . . . . . . . . . . 2.3.1 Simple modulation method . . . . . . . . . 2.3.2 IQ-Modulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4 High frequency lter conclusion . . . . . . . . . . Bibliography

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List of Figures
1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9 2.10 2.11 2.12 Ideal frequency response of low pass lter . . . . . Ideal frequency response of high pass lter . . . . Ideal frequency response of band pass lter . . . . Ideal frequency response of notch lter . . . . . . Low pass lter with dierent realization methode Ideal frequency response of allpass lter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2 2 3 4 5 7 7 7 8 9 10 10 10 11 12 13 14

Capacitor and inductor model at radio-frequency . . . . . . . . Insertion loss of capacitor [Murata-Data sheet] . . . . . . . . . . Measurement the 220nF capacitor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Simple principle of S-Parameter system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Smith Chart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Transformation with capacitor and inductor . . . . . . . . . . . Transformation with micro strip line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Schematic of matching network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PCB Artwork of matching network and measurement comparison Principle working of simple modulation method . . . . . . . . . Blockdiagramm des IQ Modulator am Sender . . . . . . . . . . Spectrum of IQ-modulators output signal with 85o Phase-Shift

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Abbreviation
DAC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . EMI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . GBW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PCB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . SAW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . UHF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Digital Analog Converter Electromagnetic interference Gain Bandwidth Printed Circuit Board Surface Acoustic Wave Ultra-High Frequency

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1 Introduction to signal lter

1.1 Fundamental types of lters
In this section the ideal fundamental types of lters will be introduced. The common lter characteristics, basic applications and some design parameters of those lters will be discussed.

1.1.1 Low pass lter

The low pass lter is the most well known and used lter in the electronic eld. The frequency response of a ideal low pass lter is given in Figure 1.1. The basic parameters for a low pass lter are: The Bandwidth B. The gain factor in Pass-band 0 B. Zero gain in Stop-band > B.

Figure 1.1: Ideal frequency response of low pass lter A low pass lter is often used to smoothen the signal, to block the high frequency distortion in DC supply network or as stabilize-element in controlling system.

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION TO SIGNAL FILTER

1.1.2 High pass lter

Figure 1.2: Ideal frequency response of high pass lter In Figure 1.2 is the frequency response of a ideal high pass lter. As the opposite of low pass lter, the basic parameters for a high pass lter are: The cut-o frequency B. The pass band gain |H()|. The attenuation in stop band: < B. The high pass lter is often used to couple AC-signal into the system, or connection link for AC-signal between dierent systems.

1.1.3 Band pass lter

Figure 1.3: Ideal frequency response of band pass lter The band pass lter is a combination between high pass and low pass lter, its frequency response is shown in Figure 1.3. The basic parameters of a ideal band pass lter are: Filters band-width B. 2

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION TO SIGNAL FILTER Center frequency o Gain within lter passband: |H()|, (o B ) (o + B ). 2 2 Attenuation in stop-frequency. Resultantly quality factor: Q =
o B

The band pass lter is widely used in communication system to lter the signal before up-link and to select the desired signal as well as to reduce noise on the down-link.

1.1.4 Notch lter

The last type of the fundamental lter is the notch lter. As the frequency response in Figure 1.4 describes, the notch lter is normally used to prevent unwanted frequencies to interfere with the system like in the EMI-Filter or to prevent the interference between the signals of one system. The basis parameters of the notch lter are: The stopband bandwidth B. Center notch frequency o . Stopband attenuation factor H(o )/H(0). Symmetrical in gain factor between low and high pass band.

Figure 1.4: Ideal frequency response of notch lter

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION TO SIGNAL FILTER

1.2 Design of fundamental lter

1.2.1 Design requirement of lter
All of the lters can be described with a transfer equation between the input and output. This function describes the relationship between the voltage or current of input and output signals, which depends on the frequency of the signal. The transfer function of a lter must satisfy the Hurwitz condition for the stability. The lter with passive elements, the input and output impedances must be positive real for realization. Lossless lter is desirable to minimize any signal power loss, and reduction of noise level.

1.2.2 Filter realization

The fundamental lter can be realized with passive components as show in Figure1.5(b), or with a active components like in Figure 1.5(a).

(a) Active lter

(b) Passive lter

Figure 1.5: Low pass lter with dierent realization method The method using passive components is more suitable for lter in high frequencies. They produces less noise than the active components, and the maximum working frequency of a opamp in active lter is limited, this factor determinates by the GBW. The circuit topology of passive lter do not usually have a feedback, therefore more resistant against instability. But at the lower frequency the active lter shows many advantages over passive lter: 4

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION TO SIGNAL FILTER The active lter has great potential with integrated circuit technology. Active lter has good isolation between input and output ports. Active lter can be used as lter and amplier.

1.2.3 Fundamental lter overview

In this chapter the fundamental lters were introduced with their applications and design parameters. These lter are used in combination with each others to create the needed character of signal lter. There is other type of lter, in which the signal level of input and output signal are the same, but the phase are changed, the frequency response is shown in Figure1.6. In the high frequency application, which wireless communication is a typical example, where the bandwidth of signal is often limited and most of the system are optimized for only one small frequency area, therefore the most mentioned lter is the bandpass lter. Other than the ltering application, the design of lter has

Figure 1.6: Ideal frequency response of allpass lter to concern about the impedance matching aimed toward maximizing signal power transfer between source and load. For example, in the communication via satellites the signal levels at receiver are usually very weak, so the input lter of the receiver has to be optimized in order to get as much signal power as possible. This also requires that the lter network has to be lossless, since the passive lter can not amplier the signal. The active lter is often unsuitable for these applications, because they tend to be considerably noisier than the passive counterparts. In the communication channel, where the signals are really closely packed together, the linearity of the front-end lter is very critical. The non-linearity of a lter may cause potentially unacceptable intermodulation responses, in this criteria the passive architectural lter is better. 5

2 High frequency signal lter

2.1 Parameters of high frequency signal and system
2.1.1 Wavelength of high frequency signal
The phase velocity of a electromagnetic wave is dened as in 2.1, in which c0 3 108 [m/s] is the speed of light and r is the relative dielectric constant of the medium material. As the result the wavelength of a electromagnetic wave is given in 2.2. With the increasing of frequency the wavelength becomes smaller. At UHF-band between 300MHz and 3GHz, vacuum as medium material the wavelength is between 1 meter to 0.1 meter. With the semiconductor material Germanium r = 16.6 the wavelength is from 0.2 meter to 0.02 meter. The physical sizes of components and the strip conductors in the electrical circuit are larger than the wavelength itself, hence the electromagnetic can change its phase many times between the input and output of one component or strip line. This results unpredictable circuits behavior. c0 vp [m/s] =
r

(2.1)

[m] =

vp f

(2.2)

At higher frequency, the inuent of parasitic elements of components become more signicantly, the model for the discrete component becomes more complex, as shown in Figure 2.1. The conductor path between the components, because of the phase change between input and output, becomes a electrical part of the circuit schematic. All the discrete components of a electrical circuit have to be considered as distributed elements. Each capacitor and inductor has a self-resonant frequency, where capacitor becomes inductor and inductor becomes capacitor because of the parasitic capacitor and inductor. Figure 2.2 illustrates the insertion loss of capacitor depend on frequency,the lowest peak of insertion loss denotes the self-resonant frequency of capacitor. In Figure2.3 is a measurement result of a 220 nF capacitor, the result shows that at 900 MHz the capacitor is already a inductor. 6

CHAPTER 2. HIGH FREQUENCY SIGNAL FILTER

(a) Capacitor RF model

(b) Inductor RF model

Figure 2.1: Capacitor and inductor model at radio-frequency

Figure 2.2: Insertion loss of capacitor [Murata-Data sheet]

Figure 2.3: Measurement the 220nF capacitor

CHAPTER 2. HIGH FREQUENCY SIGNAL FILTER

2.1.2 Reexion and scattering parameter models

Because of the reasons mentioned in section2.1.1 it is dicult to characterize a network of lter in high frequency system. The unavoidable parasitic inductance in circuit interconnects makes perfect short circuits an impossibility at high frequency. The attempt based on open-short measurement is not suitable, the measurement results might be compromised by the parasitic components of the measurement equipments. At high frequency a circuit network is usually characterized by the scattering parameter models. In contrast to the impedance and admittance, the scattering parameters of linear electrical network are measured without need of openshort circuiting input and output port. Instead, these ports are terminated in xed and known characteristic impedance that are often similar or identical to the terminating impedances incorporated in the design. The S-Parameters are not only measurement-friendly but also useful in design. Because the SParameter of a linear network interrelate incident and reected waves of energy at input and output port, they are useful in the design of microwave network. The reason is, at high frequency the voltages and currents are more dicult to quantify. By optimizing the refection of input and output of the network the network can be aimed to be lossless and delivers the maximum signal power transfer from source to load. In gure2.4 is the simple model of a two port system. The S-Parameter of a

Figure 2.4: Simple principle of S-Parameter system two port system is given in equation 2.3, a1 , b1 , a2 , b2 are the input and output incident and reected energies, respectively. To determinate the coecients of S-Matrix, the reexion factor at the input and output are calculated as in equations 2.4 and 2.5. b1 b2 = S11 S12 S21 S22 a1 a2 (2.3)

Zin Rsource Zin + Rsource Zout Rload 2 = Zout + Rload 1 =

(2.4) (2.5)

As the result, the S-Parameter Matrix of a two port system is shown in equation 2.6. S11 S12 1 1 + 1 = (2.6) S21 S22 1 + 2 2 8

CHAPTER 2. HIGH FREQUENCY SIGNAL FILTER

2.2 Filter with micro strip lines

As mentioned in section 2.1.1, the electrical path between the components, so called micro strip lines, can not be considered as a short connection. The phases of traveling wave signals, between input and output of micro strip lines, can be very dierent. Using this character, a micro strip line can be used as active part of a lter architecture. One of the most used tool to design lter using micro strip line is Smith chart. Normally the system, which is designed with smith chart, is called transformation network. This system also has the selective property, which is specied for one small bandwidth and one pair of impedances at its input and output. In Figure 2.5 is the basic of smith chart, one impedance value can placed on this chart by using the reexion factor or normalized value on reference impedance, typical 50. According to the position of the impedance on this chart, the structure of transformation network will be determinated along with other requirements. The eect of one component in the transformation network is shown in Figure 2.6. As mentioned before, the micro strip line causes the phase change of the signal, this mechanism of this eect can be explained using the transformation in gure 2.7.

Figure 2.5: Smith Chart

With the smith chart method of network design, the eects of every circuit components are clearly visualized, hence the accuracy of the circuit is better. Depends on the tolerance of the component, the architecture of the system can be changed to remain the integrity of the result. In gure2.8 is the schematic of a matching network, designed to match a 50 input impedance and a (10.5j 6.6) output impedance at 900MHz. The micro strip lines were designed to compensate the 20% tolerance of the capacitor. The measurement comparision in gure 2.9(a) shows a quite good match between simulation and hardware, even with simple method of PCB etching.

CHAPTER 2. HIGH FREQUENCY SIGNAL FILTER

Figure 2.6: Transformation with capacitor and inductor

Figure 2.7: Transformation with micro strip line

Figure 2.8: Schematic of matching network

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CHAPTER 2. HIGH FREQUENCY SIGNAL FILTER

(a) Reexion loss

(b) Matching network

Figure 2.9: PCB Artwork of matching network and measurement comparison

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CHAPTER 2. HIGH FREQUENCY SIGNAL FILTER

2.3 IQ-Modulation for Transmitter

2.3.1 Simple modulation method
In high frequency system, the base frequency signals normally have to be modulated with a higher frequency carry signal before transmission. Because most of the DAC have a limited maximum frequency of MHz, and the required frequency for wireless communication is in GHz area, therefore a analog mixer is needed to boost the frequency of base-band signal to carry-band signal. But even a ideal analog mixer has its drawback, this is shown in equation 2.7, the output signal of a mixer consists of two signals. The frequencies of those signals are dierent, but the information within them is the same, therefore to save the cost of bandwidth only one signal is needed to be transmit. As the result, at the output signal of frequency mixer has to be ltered with a bandpass, this principle is demonstrated in Figure 2.10. y = cos( t) cos( t) 1 = [cos(t t) + cos(t + t)] 2

(2.7)

In application for wireless communication this method encounters a major problem, the carry frequency is normally many times higher then the base frequency, therefore the dierent between and + is very small. Design a bandpass lter at high frequency, which blocks only one signal without eects the other signal, is a engineering challenge.

2.3.2 IQ-Modulation
The principle of a IQ-Modulator is shown in Figure 2.11. The input signal of modulator is splitted in two components I and Q, the I component is called In-Phase signal and the Q component is Quadrature signal. The Q signal is shift 90o degree compared to I signal. The LOI and LOQ signals are the carryband frequency signal with 90o phase dierence. The equations 2.8, 2.9 and 2.10 show that the output signal contains only one frequency.

Figure 2.10: Principle working of simple modulation method 12

CHAPTER 2. HIGH FREQUENCY SIGNAL FILTER LOI input xI Mixer

output

P hase shif t

xQ

Mixer LOQ

Figure 2.11: Blockdiagramm des IQ Modulator am Sender

xI =cos(t) LOI =cos(t) xI LOI =cos(t) cos(t) 1 = [cos(t t) + cos(t + t)] 2 xQ =cos(t + ) = sin(t) 2 LOQ =cos(t + ) = sin(t) 2 xQ LOQ =sin(t) sin(t) 1 = [cos(t t) cos(t + t)] 2 y =xI LOI + xQ LOQ = cos(t t)

(2.8)

(2.9) (2.10)

With the IQ-Modulation method, a bandpass lter is no longer needed, and the system proofs to be robust against errors and mis-matched due to the complexity. A simulation was made, with the phase shift between the I-Signal and Q-Signal only 85o , as the result in gure 2.12 the level dierence between the pass frequency and stop frequency is still more than 40dB.

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CHAPTER 2. HIGH FREQUENCY SIGNAL FILTER

Figure 2.12: Spectrum of IQ-modulators output signal with 85o Phase-Shift

2.4 High frequency lter conclusion

Section 2.1 provides the basic understanding of signal and its properties in a high frequency system. The problem with the physical size of the electrical components leads to the dierent way of handling and designing the high frequency lter. The S-Parameter system, introduced in section 2.1.2, is a special method to work with high frequency system. By using the S-Parameter and smith-chart, designer is able to predict the behavior of the electrical components and the aection of parameter tolerance as well as parasitic elements. The design method in section 2.2 is one of the typical way of designing a high frequency lter. But on the mobile communication devices, where the size of the device is smaller than the required place for micro strip-line lter, there is another method to realize a lter, one of them is using acoustic wave property of signal on carrier material, like in SAW-Filter. Apart from normal electrical lter, there is also lter-alike conguration, the method with IQ-Modulation in section 2.3 is one of them. By using the mathematical relation of the signals, designer can create a system with a lter property.

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Bibliography
[1] F. Caspers. Rf engineering basic concepts: The smith chart, 2010. [Online; accessed 23-October-2012]. [2] J. Choma. Radio frequency lter design, 2013. [Online; accessed 23October-2012]. [3] Wikipedia. Smith chart wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, 2012. [Online; accessed 23-October-2012].

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