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Wireless Reciever Arch
Wireless Reciever Arch
Receiver basics
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Channel selection why not at RF? BPF first or LNA first? Direct digitization of RF signal Sub sampling receiver noise problem Sub-sampling Heterodyne receiver image problem Super-heterodyne receiver more image problem Image-reject receivers
Receiver architectures
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Homodyne (direct conversion, zero zero-IF) IF) DC offset Digital IF Wide-IF double-conversion Sliding IF
Prof. C. Patrick Yue Slide 1
Using one or more IF stages to relax the filter requirements, but need to deal with images Using image reject mixers with I&Q LO signals to eliminate the need of band-pass filters (to enable higher level of integration) RF ICs typically employ a combination of simple mixing with some image filtering and image reject mixing
Slide 2
GSM example: channel bandwidth is 200 kHz, RF carriers at 935960 MHz Filter Q = 10 * RF / BW = 10 * 950 M / 200k = 47 47,500! 500! (Impossible to achieve such high Q at RF, or too expensive!) Instead, we do band select, for GSM, the band is 25 MHz, so the filter Q required is 10 * RF / BW = 10 * 950 M / 25 M = 380, much more reasonable.
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Trade-off between suppressing inter-modulation products due to interferers vs. noise figure BPF first: better interferer rejection, but higher noise figure due to the insertion loss of the filter LNA first: better noise figure, receiver can be desensitized due to interferers Interferers are bigger problem problem, so BPF first is adapted in all receivers
Slide 4
Directly sample the carrier at RF to facilitate the use of high-speed DSP. For input power ranging from 100 dBm (3.2 Vpeak) to 10 dBm (100 mVpeak), the ADC will need the following performance:
A 1-GHz, 15-bit ADC is impossible to implement with reasonable power in the near future
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Sub-Sampling Receiver
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The noise floor is raised by a factor of 2m, where m is the sub-sampling factor Phase noise is increased by m2 at the output of the sub-sampler
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Heterodyne Receiver
The KEY question in receiver design is at what at stage to perform pe o channel select? Easier to achieve high-Q BPF at lower frequency, which favors lower IF IF, but but Image rejection becomes difficult Another questions is should the LO (LO) be above or below carrier (RF)?
Mixer output
the ease in tuning the LO over the desired band of frequencies choice of High Side LO is motivated by the ease in tuning the LO over the desired band of frequencies. Tuning of the LO is often done using a varactor. For a given voltage change (and varactor capacitance change), the LO frequency can be changed over a wider range of frequencies for a high-side LO compared to a low low-side side LO. Due to the limited linearity of the varactor, choice of the high-side LO results in improved linearity of the LO frequency with change in bias voltage. Due to this reason, the high-side LOs are more popular. lower noise and power dissipation since operating at lower frequencies
Another important p consideration in the choice of high-side g LO versus low-side LO is in the image frequencies that will be picked up. The choice of high-side LO versus low-side LO might be made based on the relative quietness of the image band in each case.
Slide 9
Trade-off between sensitivity (image rejection) and selectivity (channel selection) dictates the choice of IF
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High-IF image reject filter easier to implement and provides better sensitivity Low-IF channel select filter easier to implement and gives better selectivity
Both image reject BPF and channel select select BPF are difficult to implement on chip, chip which hich makes heterodyne heterod ne receiver recei er less attractive attracti e for monolithic RF transceiver
Prof. C. Patrick Yue Slide 10
Half-IF Problem
2LO
A spurious tone at 0.5*IF 0 5*IF (half way between RF and LO) undergoes even harmonic distortion and generates a spur at (RF + LO) at the input of the mixer, which mixes with the 2nd harmonic of the LO to produce noise at (RF LO). To suppress the half-IF phenomenon
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minimize second-order distortion in the RF path (using differential circuits) maintain 50% duty cycle in the LO to reduce 2LO
Prof. C. Patrick Yue Slide 11
Tunable high-Q bandpass filters are difficult and expensive to implement, so rather th th than t tuning i th the BPF center t f frequency, th the LO is i changed h d depending on the desired channel
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For example, FM radios use 10.7 MHz as the fixed IF, to tune to the station at 101 3 MHz 101.3 MHz, the LO is adjusted to 112 112.0 0 MHz. MHz
Prof. C. Patrick Yue Slide 12
Super-heterodyne Receiver
To relax the trade-off between sensitivity (image reject) and selectivity (channel select), we can introduce a second IF to the heterodyne receiver architecture, which results in a super-heterodyne p y receiver A super-heterodyne receiver is a heterodyne receiver with dual IFs A super-heterodyne receiver relaxes the bandpass filter Q at each stage by having more filter stages
Qoverall = 10 950 M 100 M 10 M 10 10 = 95 100 500 = 4.75e 6 100 M 10 M 200k
Prof. C. Patrick Yue Slide 13
The input p spurious p tone at IM2 ( (at input p of 1st mixer) ) = RF + 2LO2 will cause a secondary image tone at LO2 + IF2 at the input of the 2nd mixer. Example: given that RF = 950 MHz, LO1 = 1050 MHz, and LO2 = 110 MHz
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IF1 = 100 MHz and IF2 = 10 MHz IM2 = IF2 + LO2 + LO1 = 10 + 110 + 1050 = 1170 MHz (= RF + 2LO2)
Prof. C. Patrick Yue Slide 14
The input spurious tone at 2LO1 2LO2 RF will also cause a secondary image tone at LO2 + IF2 at the input of the second mixer Notice that the difference between 2LO1 2LO2 RF and LO1 is the same as p tone in the previous p slide the spurious
Slide 15
Requires very high precision in frequency synthesizer (temperature variation can be a big problem) Requires very wide tuning range in in frequency synthesizer Requires both LOs to track each other
Slide 16
Using a variable LO1and fixed LO2 makes the task of channel selection extremely challenging Example: In GSM we need to zero down on to a frequency such as 935.20 MHz with increments of 0.2 MHz F ti l change Fractional h in i LO1frequency LO1f is i 0.2 0 2 MHz MH / 950 MHz MH ~ 0.02% 0 02% Total change in LO1 is 25 Hz / 950MHz ~ 2.5%
Prof. C. Patrick Yue Slide 17
Using a fixed LO1 makes it easier to design LO1. Fixed frequency oscillators have the advantage that a lower phase noise can be obtained due to the lower PLL bandwidth that can be used Using a variable LO2 makes the task of channel selection much easier. Fractional change required in LO2 is 0.2 0 2 MHz / 100 MHz ~ 0 0.2%. 2% Total change required in LO2 is 25 MHz / 100 MHz ~ 25%
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Requires wide tuning range VCO in the frequency synthesizer, need to the use of varactor in conjunction with switching capacitor arrays
Prof. C. Patrick Yue Slide 18
High-Q filters are hard to build and expensive Use more filters each with lower Q But that requires q more mixing g in the receive chain which leads to image g problems and needs more filters So are there any other way to suppress image without using filters? So,
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I and d Q path th use LO LOs th that t are 90 out t of f phase, h cosine i vs. sine i
Prof. C. Patrick Yue Slide 21
90 degree shift is added to the Q path, path such that the output due to the image signal is 180 out of phase with respect to the image in the I path
Prof. C. Patrick Yue Slide 22
Question: Remember quadrature modulation using I&Q as two separate channels? How would it work in a image reject receiver architecture?
Prof. C. Patrick Yue Slide 23
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Quadrature Generators
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With Qi and QBi absent, the polyphase filter reduces to the simple RC-CR Th current The t configuration fi ti allows ll easy cascading di of f multiple lti l stages t
Prof. C. Patrick Yue Slide 30
With Qi and QBi absent, the polyphase filter reduces to the simple RC-CR Th current The t configuration fi ti allows ll easy cascading di of f multiple lti l stages t
Prof. C. Patrick Yue Slide 31
Multi-stage broaden the bandwidth over which the amplitude of I and Q paths matches.
Prof. C. Patrick Yue Slide 32
Why 4A2?
5% of amplitude imbalance (~0 (~0.5 5 dB) and 1 of phase mismatch result in approximately 30 dB of IRR
Prof. C. Patrick Yue Slide 33
Amplitude imbalance and phase mismatch in the I and Q paths limits the IRR
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Gain mismatch can usually be limited to < 0.5~1.0 dB and phase error is around 12 Mi Mismatch t h in i mixers i and d LPF LPFs also l d degrade d IRR
Typical image rejection ratio achievable on-chip is about 2530 dB using Hartley architecture
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Quadrature LO can be generated by passing the output of the frequency synthesizer through a polyphase filter
A 90 phase shift between I & Q signals is achieved by shifting the I-signal with 45 and the Q-signal with +45
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Practical Considerations
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An overall image suppression of 5570 dB is needed in most receiver (what determines the required image rejection?) With an appropriate choice of IF frequency (high enough), an image suppression of 30-40 dB can be achieved by the RF band select filter or the image reject filter (if necessary) Hartleys Hartley s architecture provides an additional 25 2530 30 dB image rejection bringing the overall image rejection to 5570 dB Other mismatches in the I&Q paths limits the practical IRR to 25 to 30 dB
Mismatches between I&Q mixers, LPFs I&Q LO mismatches in amplitude and phase
Polyphase yp filter
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Multi-stage improves I & Q matching over a wider bandwidth, but increases noise (thermal noise in the resistors) and power consumption (amplitude reduction) Practical implementation rarely uses more than 2 stages of RCCR
Prof. C. Patrick Yue Slide 39
Weaver Architecture
We have seen that a 90 phase shift is introduced between I & Q signals by mixing the incoming signal using cosine and sine LOs We need to achieve another 90 phase shift, such that the down-converted desired signal will remain in phase while the one due to the image spur will be become 180 out of phase. In Weaver architecture, the second down-conversion mixing is also performed with I&Q LOs to achieve another 90 phase shift between the I&Q paths
Prof. C. Patrick Yue Slide 40
Note that a negative sine is used as the LO for the Q path to provide the +90 phase shift because the incoming desired signal is a positive sine wave and the image tone is negative sine wave
Prof. C. Patrick Yue Slide 41
Weaver Receiver
What happens pp if the desired input p signal g is a sine wave? Weaver architecture is sensitive to relative phase of the RF input and the LOs To support quadrature modulation (incoming signals in cosine and sine), the second mixing requires quadrature mixing to preserve the desired signal
Slide 42
Recall that there are two secondary image tones which can cause interference at IF2 y the one above LO1 will appear as a negative sine wave at the input of the second mixer, so it will under go a total of 180 phase shift after the second down down-conversion conversion y the one below LO1 will appear as a positive sine wave (just like the desired signal) at the input of the second mixer, and it will become in-phase with its I-path counterpart y BPF is used to remove this tone before the second mixer Prof. C. Patrick Yue
Slide 43
Homodyne Receiver
LO frequency is the same as the incoming RF carrier frequency Also known as direction conversion or zero-IF receiver No more image problem to worry about But it will work only if the desired signal has symmetrical sidebands (known as double sideband modulation)
Prof. C. Patrick Yue Slide 44
Homodyne Receiver
Use quadrature mixing to separate the upper sideband signal and the lower sideband signal g Quadrature mixing also removes the problem due to phase mismatch between the carriers and LO Use DSP to reconstruct the desired signal in the baseband Note that is the input signal has a 2 MHz bandwidth, the I&Q paths each need to have a bandwidth of 1 MHz
Prof. C. Patrick Yue Slide 45
If phase modulation is used, quadrature mixing converts the information in to the relative phase between I and Q signals. In t the e abo above ee example, a p e, t the e ca carrier e is s modulated odu ated us using gQ QPSK, S , hence e ce (t) is /4, 3/4, 5/4, or 7/4
Prof. C. Patrick Yue Slide 46
Advantages
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Remove the need for image reject BPF between LNA and mixer Channel select can be performed using LPF in stead of BPF DC offset (A BIG PROBLEM!!)
Disadvantages
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LO leakage Strong interferer Time-varying offset LO with non-50% duty y cycle y Even order distortion in LNA
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1/f noise I&Q gain and phase mismatch More stringent dynamic range and reverse isolation
Slide 47
DC Offset
DC offset can be as large as 10 mV due to various sources The desired signal can be much small, e.g. 0.5 mV In order for the ADC to be able to resolve the desired signal, the IF amplifier needs to provide sufficient gain so the desired signal reaches the full scale of the ADC, e.g. 500mV With a gain of 1000, the DC offset will clearly saturate the ADC
Slide 48
LO signal can leak through the LO port to the RF port due to parasitic couplings and cause self mixing
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A strong interferer can leak through the RF port to the LO port due to parasitic couplings and cause self mixing
Slide 50
LO signal can leak through the antenna, radiate into the air and reflect from the surrounding and reach the RF port of the mixer Good LNA reverse isolation can suppress this effect
Slide 51
If the duty cycle of the LO is not 50%, the output of the mixer will have a DC offset ff t
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In homodyne receivers we also need to consider even order distortion characterized by IIP2 Consider two strong interferers closely spaced in frequency being received atthe antenna. t Second S d order d distortion di t ti results lt in i a difference diff frequency f to t appear at t the output of the LNA. The mixer exhibits a finite amount of direct feedthrough; hence the difference frequency signal would end up at the output of the mixer corrupting the desired signal. For homodyne applications, the LNA should be d i d to designed t have h hi high h IIP2 i in addition dditi t to hi high h IIP3 IIP3. Use differential circuit to reduce even order distortion
Prof. C. Patrick Yue Slide 53
Requires huge AC coupling capacitor (too big to fit on a chip) Very slow settling time, for example, a 200-Hz cut-off implies a settling time of 2 ms, which can too long for most system O l works Only k with ith zero DC modulation d l ti which hi h has h no data d t below b l the th cut-off t ff frequency of the HPF
Slide 54
Some systems such as TDMA, inherently contain time intervals during which the receiver is idle, which could be used to perform offset cancellation The output DC voltage accumulated on the capacitor during the idle time could be measured and subtracted from the output voltage of the mixer resulting in cancellation of the DC offset If the offset cancellation is performed at a sufficient rate, the time time-varying varying DC offset can also be handled kT/C noise due to the switch must be considered An alternative is to have two sets of mixers so that, at any given moment, one is used sed while hile the other is having ha ing its offset cancelled
Prof. C. Patrick Yue Slide 55
1/f noise from the mixer presents a severe problem in the design of homodyne receivers since the 1/f noise spectrum falls in the same band as the down-converted output signal
Slide 56
Deviation from the quadrature phase difference means that some of the I g will appear pp in the Q channel and vice versa, , which reduce SNR in signals both channels Can be compensated with DSP in the baseband using known data as training (or calibration) sequence
Gain mismatch can be compensated by the variable gain IF amplifiers in the I&Q paths
Prof. C. Patrick Yue Slide 57
Case 1: relaxes LPF noise requirements, demands higher linearity from IF amp Case 2: LPF needs to low noise figure figure, IF amp linearity requirement is relaxed Case 3: high linearity required in both IF amp and ADC, LPF performed in digital domain
Linear LNA (low IIP2 and IIP3) Linear mixers (to suppress DC offset) LO operating LOs i at quadrature d with i h precisely i l 50% d duty cycle l DC offsets in the range of uV Low 1/f Noise High degree of isolation and stability
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Digital IF Receiver
Commonly used for multi-band, multi-mode cellular phone applications The second stage of mixing and filtering in a super heterodyne (dual IF) architecture is performed in the digital domain Aft th After the fi first t mixer, i th the signal i li is digitized di iti d b by th the A/D The quantization and thermal noise of the A/D cannot exceed a few uV for a good receiver Th linearity The li it of f the th A/D must t be b sufficiently ffi i tl high hi h to t suppress the th intermodulation outputs from corrupting the desired signal Choice of the first IF is dictated by the speed of the A/D Typically first IF is around 75 MHz with the ADC running at 150 to 200 MS/s and Typically, 9 to 11 bit resolution
Prof. C. Patrick Yue Slide 60
But we still need image reject BPF filter before the first mixer, which means that we need to go off-chip, off chip can we do better?
Slide 61
The wide IF double conversion architecture is Weaver architecture with the IF2 = 0 As in a Weaver architecture, there are two stages of down-conversion The secondary image that plagues Weaver architecture is suppressed by using IF2=0 As in a homodyne receiver, additional mixers (hence the name double conversion) are required to correctly detect the signal The first LO is fixed and the second LO is tuned to the desired LO Because the first LO is fixed, fixed easier trade-offs trade offs may be obtained with regard to a LO phase noise As in the case of homodyne architecture, channel select BPF is eliminated LO leakage g problem p is greatly g y suppressed pp since LO1 is not equal q to the carrier frequency of the desired signal The only filter therefore required is the front-end band select filter Very good for monolithic implementation
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Both the first and second LO are generated by the same frequency synthesizer
Prof. C. Patrick Yue Slide 64
Vary LO1 and LO2 together to perform essentially the same function as direct conversion No external IF filtering Channel selection at baseband with LPF Very high IF of 1GHz 3GH i 3GHz image i is 2GH 2GHz away from f 5GHz 5GH signal i l Inherent bandpass filtering of 3GHz: 23dBc RF mixer: 5-4 = 1GHz (IF) and 5+4 = 9GHz No image-reject mixers required
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Divid-by-4 in the divider chain produces I&Q LOIF with excellent quadrature p q properties p
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References
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Prof. M. Perrott, MIT http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and-ComputerScience/6-776Spring-2005/CourseHome/index.htm Prof. L. Larson, UC San Diego ECE 265A and 265B lecture notes
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