Introduction to Radio Electronics

Lecture-intro
 Motivation
The RF and wireless market has suddenly expanded
unimaginable dimensions, devices such as pager,
cellular, cordless phones, modems, and RF IDs in all
aspect of our lives.
In 1998, cell phone market was ~ $2.5B with 4.5
Million customers.

In 2000, Cell market was

extended upto $ 5.0B and
now in 2012 1.75 B smart
phone units were sale in
worldwide. 2
 Radio Frequency
Spans from 3kHz to 300GHz
• Advantage:
– Long Distance
– No stress on line-of-sight (LoC)
• Disadvantage:
– Needs to be operated in accordance with the FCC
– Interference occurs between RF devices

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 Selecting a frequency
• Spectrum Characteristics
– How “rich” is your signal
– Distance and environment
• Legal Considerations
– Licensed or unlicensed
– Allowed power output
– International regulations

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 Generalizing the RF Spectrum
Frequency Examples
3 Hz – 30 kHz Submarine Communications
30 kHz – 300 kHz RFID, Navigation Signals
300 kHz – 3 MHz AM Broadcasts
3 MHz – 30 MHz Amateur radio, RFID
30 MHz – 300 MHz FM Radio, Line of sight aircraft communication, Maritime
Radio
300 MHz – 3 GHz Broadcast TV, Cell phones, WLAN, Bluetooth, GPS
3 GHz – 30 GHz WLAN, Backhaul Communications

• Lower frequencies will go further and more easily

penetrate obstacles
• Higher frequencies have greater bandwidth
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Electromagnetic spectrum

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 Licensed Frequencies
• If a RF signal is considered “Mission Critical” a
license should be considered
– Allows for sole use of that frequency
– Significant cost
• $19 Billion raised in 700 MHz auction
• Large Telecommunication providers
• Other options do exist in the unlicensed
spectrum

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 ISM Band
• Industrial, Scientific, and Medical Frequency range
bands 6.765–6.795 MHz
• A shared and unlicensed set of 13.553–13.567 MHz
frequencies 26.957–27.283 MHz
– Must accept all interference received
40.66–40.70 MHz
– Transmission power regulations
433.05–434.79 MHz
– Usage regulations
902–928 MHz
• Regulations vary by country
2.400–2.500 GHz
– Max power output for 2.4 GHz: 5.725–5.875 GHz
24–24.25 GHz
• US: 30 dBm, before antenna. 36 dBm, with
antenna. 61–61.5 GHz
• Europe: 20 dBm 122–123 GHz
244–246 GHz
– 900 MHz is unlicensed only in North and
South America
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 ISM Congestion
• 900 MHz and 2.4 GHz ranges are extremely
congested
• Urban areas will have higher congestion

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History of RF Radio Systems

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 RF wave propagation

Surface waves – propagate using diffraction (ΔH < λ, f < 2MHz), also conductivity
of the terrain important (best over sea water, poor over deserts and jungle)
• Space waves – direct and reflected from the ground (fading possible)
• Sky waves – due to ionization of the ionosphere (day sun light, UV) and
refraction or bending on its different layers (but partly absorbed) 12
Hertz’s experiments (1880’)

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Regenerative receiver (1912)

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Superheterodyne receiver
(Armstrong, 1918)

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FM radio (Armstrong, patent 1933)

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 FM radio

•Q1 used as oscillator and modulator (transmitter) /demodulator (receiver)

•Varator diode (D1) used as modulating the frequency of oscillations
•X -node generate the audio signal in receiver .
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Today RF Communication

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RF Design Challenges

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 RF Design Bottleneck

RF section is still design Bottleneck of the System

due to three major reasons

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 1- Multidisciplinary Field
RF system demands a good understanding of many areas
that are not directly related to the integrated circuits
(Ics)

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 2- RF Design Hexagon
RF circuits must process analog signal with a wide
dynamic range at higher frequencies
Trade-of involved in the design named as “RF design
Hexagon”

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 3. Design Tools
CAD tools for RFICs are still in their infancy, forcing the
designer to rely on experience or inefficient simulation
techniques to predict the performance, e.g. nonlinearity, time
variance, noise etc.

Time domain simulation are important in RF design but its

difficult to resolve the closely spaced frequency component.

Another issue in simulating RF circuits relates to external

components that cannot be modeled by typical devices in
SPICE. E.g. SAW ( surface acoustic waves) filter modeled by
RLC circuit network provides first order approximation which
may not predict the effects of instability and impedance
mismatch.
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RF Applications

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RF Applications

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RF Applications

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RF Applications

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RF Applications

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 Remote Control using RF
• Remote Control:
– Wireless device used to operate audio, video
and/or other electronic equipment using
transmission.
• Car opener
• Garage Door

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Old and Modern RF systems

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 Difference in Analog & Digital Systems
Analog System

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 Difference in Analog & Digital Systems
Digital Systems

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 Choice of Technology

At present, Si and GaAs bipolar and BiCMOS

technologies have major section of the RF Market.

GaAs MESFET devices have maintained a strong

presence in RF products such as Power Amplifiers and
front-end switches due to higher breakdown voltage,
cut-off frequency, semi-insulating substrate and high
quality inductor and capacitors. 37
 Choice of Technology for RF ICs
• Si Devices in a VLSI technology have potential to
provide higher level integration at the lowest cost,
such as frequency synthesizer (PLL). Typical
transceivers are available in bipolar technologies.
• CMOS technology can achieved high transit
frequencies , e.g. 100 GHz.
• In near future, the WBG (wideband gap e.g. SiC,
GaN, ZnO etc ) based HEMT and FET devices will
dominate in RF systems due to amazing
properties such as higher electric field
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Thank you for Attention!

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