EERF 6330- RF IC Design

Radio System Design II

Transceiver Architectures

Prof. Bhaskar Banerjee

Bhaskar Banerjee, EERF 6330, Sp2013, UTD

Outline
Receiver Architecture
Transmitter Architectures
Reading:
Chapter 4: Fundamental of Microelectronics, B. Razavi

Bhaskar Banerjee, EERF 6330, Sp2013, UTD

Frequency Planning
depends directly on
receiver topology
number of down-conversions
mode of operation

Bhaskar Banerjee, EERF 6330, Sp2013, UTD

Frequency Planning
Blockers
Understanding the wireless applications that co-exist in the frequency spectrum
surrounding the band of interest is needed
Operating close to the frequency bands of other applications places great
demands on front-end filter selectivity

Bhaskar Banerjee, EERF 6330, Sp2013, UTD

Frequency Planning
Blockers
Solution by frequency planning
IF frequency selection
to avoid blockers that can interfere with the IF chain
Must check the availability of IF surface-acoustic wave
(SAW) filters at the chosen frequency
Another solution
Filtering

Bhaskar Banerjee, EERF 6330, Sp2013, UTD

Frequency Planning
Spurs and De-Sensing
Spurs
unwanted spurious frequencies that are generated by
interaction between various components of our own
transceiver
De-sensing
Spurs with a higher power level lands either directly in the
band or adjacent to the band and saturates the transceiver

Bhaskar Banerjee, EERF 6330, Sp2013, UTD

Frequency Planning
Transmitter leakage
a major concern for any RF subsystems, especially in duplex systems
de-sense the receiver by saturating the receiver front-end or causing
oscillations
makes it difficult to integrate both transmit and receive functions of a
duplex system on a single chip
Solution
stringent filtering/isolation to maintain confinement to the transmit band

Bhaskar Banerjee, EERF 6330, Sp2013, UTD

Heterodyne Receivers
Also called Super-Heterodyne
have been in use for a long time and are quite popular from
the early days of radio communication systems
two (or more) stages of down conversion

Bhaskar Banerjee, EERF 6330, Sp2013, UTD

LO Leakage
LO leakage
LO signals and their harmonics are major sources of spurious interference
Leakage paths
IC substrate, package, or board

Bhaskar Banerjee, EERF 6330, Sp2013, UTD

LO Leakage
LO leakage
Solution by frequency planning
Decide LO frequencies where all LO frequencies and their harmonics,
and frequencies resulting from higher-order mixing of these signals do
not fall in the RF or IF bands

Bhaskar Banerjee, EERF 6330, Sp2013, UTD

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Problem of Image Frequency

Image frequency
One of the most problematic issues with designing traditional
heterodyne receivers
It is located on the opposite side of the LO frequency and folds
on top of the IF band as the signal in down converted in a mixer
It needs to be addressed by either filtering or image-reject mixing
topologies

Bhaskar Banerjee, EERF 6330, Sp2013, UTD

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Why is Image Frequency Critical?

Pass Mixer

Down conversion thru a mixer

generates f1-f2 component.
Image frequency(f3) has equal
spectral distance from the LO(f2) to
the RFin(f1) on the opposite side.

Pass Mixer

Mixer generates an unwanted

signal placed exactly at the same
frequency as the down converted IF
signal, where f1-f2 = f2-f3.
Unwanted signal located on the
Image frequency CANNOT be
filtered out once down converted to
the IF.

Pass Mixer

Bhaskar Banerjee, EERF 6330, Sp2013, UTD

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Image-reject Filter + Mixer

Regardless of the existence of an Image Frequency, Image
Filter is always placed BEFORE a Mixer to protect the RFin
signal from possibly existing spurs at image frequency.
Image filter prevents the unwanted spurs at image frequency
from being down converted to the IF frequency.

Band-pass filter used

for image-rejection.

Bhaskar Banerjee, EERF 6330, Sp2013, UTD

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What IF frequency to choose?

With higher IF frequency, subsequent channel-select BPF requires higher Q
filter due to higher frequency, resulting in lower selectivity for given Q-factor of
the channel-select BPF.
On the contrary, lower IF frequency provides better channel-selectivity on the
subsequent channel-select BPF block.
Hence, the choice of IF frequency has a trade-off between channel-selectivity
and image-rejection.
Dual IF stage can be used to achieve both benefits at higher costs.

With lower IF, BPF cannot effectively

filter out the image frequency from the
RF signal.

With higher IF, BPF can effectively

filter out the Image resulting in clean IF
signal.

Bhaskar Banerjee, EERF 6330, Sp2013, UTD

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Typical IF frequency choice

In reality, IF frequency choice is limited by commercially
available SAW filters.
Specific application tend to use specific IF frequency value:

Typical IF frequency used

455kHz
General equipments
10.7MHz

General purpose receivers

21.4MHz

Hi-performance receivers

45MHz

TVs, Cellular phones

70MHz

Satellite TVs, Military

160MHz

Satellite equipments

Bhaskar Banerjee, EERF 6330, Sp2013, UTD

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Problem of Half IF
Half IF frequency
It is located directly between the LO and the RF
It can double in the LNA or RF amplifiers in the front-end and get
down-converted into the IF band by mixing with the second
harmonic of the LO signal
Spurious signal

1
2

(!RF

!LO )

Bhaskar Banerjee, EERF 6330, Sp2013, UTD

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What LO frequency to choose?

For a down mixer, two local oscillator frequency can be

chosen. A Low Side LO (LSLO) and a High Side LO (HSLO).
Both will down mix the RF signal to the desired IF frequency.

Bhaskar Banerjee, EERF 6330, Sp2013, UTD

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Heterodyne Receivers
Selectivity: Lower Q Required
Sensitivity: Reverse Isolation on IF stage
Stability: Lower Gain per stage required
Repeatability: Reuse IF stage and below, multiple carrier support.
e.g. Dual-IF Topology

Not fully integrable

Bhaskar Banerjee, EERF 6330, Sp2013, UTD

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Image Reject Receivers

To maintain an acceptable receiver signal quality, most modern
wireless standards require 60 to 90 dB of image rejection
The traditional method of image rejection is use of band stop
filters at the image frequency
Due to the stringent requirements, image rejection is typically
performed through a combination of filtering and image rejection
mixing techniques
The two most popular image rejection techniques are
Hartley architecture
Weaver architecture
These techniques yield about 30 to 35 dB of image rejection

Bhaskar Banerjee, EERF 6330, Sp2013, UTD

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Image Reject Receivers

Hartley Architecture
RF signal is down-converted by quadrature LO signals
Problem
sensitivity to phase and amplitude imbalance between the quadrature
mixers or the two IF paths

Bhaskar Banerjee, EERF 6330, Sp2013, UTD

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Hartley Architecture

Drawbacks
Sensitivity to Gain and Phase Matching
Linearity requirement on the Adder circuit
Bhaskar Banerjee, EERF 6330, Sp2013, UTD

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Image Reject Receivers

Weaver Architecture
Utilizes an additional pair of mixers to perform the phase shifting prior to IF
combination
Problem
a second image zero IF for the second mixing
sensitivity to phase and amplitude imbalance

sin1t

sin2t

cos1t

cos2t

Bhaskar Banerjee, EERF 6330, Sp2013, UTD

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Direct Conversion Receivers (DCR)

Also called Homodyne Receivers and Zero-IF Receivers
The desired signal is directly down converted to baseband

Bhaskar Banerjee, EERF 6330, Sp2013, UTD

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Direct Conversion Receivers

Main Features
Integration possible
No Image reject filter, LNA can drive the Mixer directly
IF SAW filter - replaced by LPF and Baseband Amps
Channel selection harder
Flicker Noise is a big issue
have been proposed in the early radio days, but the system performance has
been usually poor
With the advances in the digital communication area, a lower performance
can be accepted with the advantage of highest possible on chip integration
DCR is a demodulator with much higher dynamic range and higher frequency
of operation than a typical IF demodulator

Bhaskar Banerjee, EERF 6330, Sp2013, UTD

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Direct Conversion Receivers

The order of the baseband building blocks arrangement
(Low Pass Filter, Variable Gain Amplifier, Analog Digital
Converter)
Depending on the chosen configuration, the linearity and noise
performance of the front-end and baseband blocks can be
defined need to find optimum order

Bhaskar Banerjee, EERF 6330, Sp2013, UTD

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Direct Conversion Receivers

The order of the baseband building blocks arrangement
By placing the low-pass filter (LPF) in the front we can filter
much of the extraneous signals that result from the mixing and
relax the linearity requirements of the variable-gain amplifier
(VGA) and the analog-to-digital converter (A/D)
However, the loss through the LPF reduces the gain before the
VGA and A/D and consequently increases the overall noise
figure (NF) of the receiver

Bhaskar Banerjee, EERF 6330, Sp2013, UTD

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Direct Conversion Receivers

The order of the baseband building blocks arrangement
As we move the LPF further down the baseband chain the NF
improves while the linearity requirements of the VGA and A/D
increase

Bhaskar Banerjee, EERF 6330, Sp2013, UTD

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Direct Conversion Receivers

Frequency schemes of DCR and heterodyne receivers

Bhaskar Banerjee, EERF 6330, Sp2013, UTD

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Issues in Direct Conversion Receivers

DC Offset
Extraneous DC voltages in the demodulated spectrum of a DCR not only
corrupt the output, but also propagate through the baseband circuitry
and saturate the subsequent stages
DC offsets are mostly generated through
self-mixing the LO signal time-varying DC offset
mismatch in the mixers constant DC offset

Bhaskar Banerjee, EERF 6330, Sp2013, UTD

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Issues in Direct Conversion Receivers

Phase and Amplitude Imbalance
Most modern wireless modulation scheme requires I and Q signal
separation and demodulation to fully recover the information
implementing accurate phase-shifters at higher frequency becomes a
challenging task

Bhaskar Banerjee, EERF 6330, Sp2013, UTD

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Issues in Direct Conversion Receivers

LO Leakage and Radiation
Since a typical DCR requires a LO signal frequency identical to the RF
input carrier frequency, the LO signal is considered an in-band interference
This LO can couple into the antenna and not only radiate out in the receive
band of other users but also penetrate and saturate the RF front-end
Solution:
High reverse isolation in the front-end and good shielding of the
receiver
sub-harmonic mixing by moving the LO signal out of the RF frequency
band of interest

Bhaskar Banerjee, EERF 6330, Sp2013, UTD

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Issues in Direct Conversion Receivers

Solution for DC Offset
AC coupling of the mixer output.
This will not only remove the unwanted DC offsets, but at the same
time will corrupt the down-converted signal by attenuating the
components near DC not acceptable for demodulating most
modulation schemes that exhibit a DC peak in their signal
spectrum
Therefore, DC offset cancellation techniques using DSP are necessary to
accommodate the use of direct conversion topology in todays wireless
applications

Bhaskar Banerjee, EERF 6330, Sp2013, UTD

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Issues in Direct Conversion Receivers

Intermodulations
susceptible to both odd- and even-order intermodulations
even-order intermodulations
by the non-linearities of mixer and LNA
Solution:
Balanced topologies
even-harmonic mixing
Fundamental
Frequency

Harmonic

2nd IM

3rd IM

890, 900
1780 (2*890),
1800 (2*900),
2670 (3*890),
2700 (3*900)
1790 (890 + 900),
10 (900 - 890)
2680 (2*890 + 900),
2690 (890 + 2*900),
880 (2*890 - 900),
910 (2*900 - 890 )

Bhaskar Banerjee, EERF 6330, Sp2013, UTD

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Other Receiver Architectures

Digital-IF Receivers
Heterodyne - but 2nd IF is digitized
Digital processing alleviates I/Q mismatch problem
A/D Converter performance needs to be very good
Low thermal, quantization noise
Low non-linearity, high dynamic range

Sub-sampling Receivers
Sampling at 2f - where f is the bandwidth of the narrowband
RF signal
Aliasing of Noise

Digital Radio
Digitize at the RF Front End

Bhaskar Banerjee, EERF 6330, Sp2013, UTD

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Transmitter Architectures
Much relaxed requirements:
Noise
Interference Rejection
Band Selectivity

Direct Conversion Transmitters

Two-step Transmitters

Bhaskar Banerjee, EERF 6330, Sp2013, UTD

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Direct Conversion Transmitter

Transmit Carrier Freq = LO Frequency
Modulation and upconversion occur in same circuit.

sinct

PA

Matching
Network
Duplexer

cosct

Bhaskar Banerjee, EERF 6330, Sp2013, UTD

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Direct Conversion Transmitter

Major Drawback: PA output disturbs transmit VCO

sinct

BPF

PA
LO

cosct
Leakage: Injection pulling

Bhaskar Banerjee, EERF 6330, Sp2013, UTD

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Transmitter Architecture
Direct Conversion
Frequency Pulling
Can be alleviated by offsetting LO freq (Use f1 + f2)
Use Two-step architecture

Two-step Architecture
Quadrature mixing at low frequency
Lesser mismatch - lesser cross-talk
Channel filter to improve adjacent channel rejection
BPF needed to reject large unwanted side-band
High center frequency - off-chip filtering (expensive)
Higher Power Consumption owing to more components

Bhaskar Banerjee, EERF 6330, Sp2013, UTD

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