Proceedings of International Symposium on Signals, Systems and Electronics (ISSSE2010)

A High Performance RF Transmitter for Mobile

Communication System in High Frequency Band
Fei Zhou, Zhiqiang Yu, Jianyi Zhou
State Key Lab. of Millimeter Waves
Southeast University
Email: feizhou@emfield.org

Abstract-In this paper, the development of an RF transmitter mobile services. Naturally, it is reasonable to implement
for mobile communication systems with high data rates and large mobile communication systems in the high frequency.
spectrum efficiency in microwave frequency band is presented.
The RF transmitter operates in the 6GHz frequency band with To achieve the benefits of high frequency wireless
500MHz signal width. The transmitter has good performance as communication systems, high performance RF transmitters are
excellent linearity, high dynamic range, low EVM, and good required. The design of a high RF transmitter is a challenge in
flatness. The transmitter has a wide channel bandwidth upto future wireless communication system. The simulation and
100MHz for future mobile communication systems in high design of the transmitter in 6GHz are described and the
frequency band to avoid the crowded problems in lower
frequency bands. experimental results are evaluated.
II. DESIGN OF THE TRANSMITTER
I. INTRODUCTION
The architecture of the RF transmitter is shown in Fig. 1.
Wireless communication [1] is of particular importance in The design adopts the classical scheme of dual-frequency
the past decade as one of fundamental tools to improve quality conversion [2]. High IF interface between the RF and
of information services. The largest wireless communication baseband is employed. In this transmitter, the center frequency
service is the mobile phone networks for voice services and of the transmitting IF signal is 1.85GHz, and signal bandwidth
low data services. Recently, the requirement for very high data is wide up to 100MHz. The output signal should not be less
rates is increasing dramatically. Therefore, new high speed than 0dBm.
wireless networks will flourish soon. The required specification of the RF transmitter is listed in
Generally, high data rate systems need wide band. For the Table 1.
next generation (4G) mobile communication systems, the TABLE I
required data rates will be more than 1Gbps. The channel RF BASIC SPECIFICATION OF THE TRANSMITTER
bandwidth will be more than 100MHz to support such high Operation Bandwidth 6GHz~6.5GHz
data rate. Output Power >0dBm
Up to now, most mobile communication systems operate in TX IMD <-45dBc @ 0dBm Output
the low frequency band or the golden band (less than 6GHz).
Channel Bandwidth 100MHz
However, the low frequency band is overcrowded and is
Gain Flatness <3dB
difficult to provide continuous channel band up to 100MHz
EVM <7.5%rms
which may be required in the 4G mobile communication
system. On the other hand, the high frequency band can
provide sufficient spectrum resources for the high speed

Figure 1. Architecture of the transmitter

978-1-4244-6355-8/10/$26.00 ©2010 IEEE

 As for the transmitter, it requires very low IMD
(Intermodulation distortion) products [3] as well as high gain.
Therefore, most efforts are focused on these two specifications
during the design. The intermediate frequency (IF) signal has
been generated by I and Q modulator from baseband and
which is not included in the transmitter design temporarily. In
the transmitter the up-converter (passive mixer) is used to
convert the IF signal from the 1.85GHz band to the
transmitting RF frequency band (i.e. 6-6.5GHz). The output
from supply oscillator is used as LO signal which will be
locked to five frequencies (4.2GHz, 4.3GHz, 4.4GHz, 4.5GHz,
4.6GHz). Since the signal for driving mixer needs up to 7dBm,
an amplifier is employed to meet the power requirement for
practical application. The RF transmitter is to be used in
communication system, then power control should be
I_Probe
I_Mix_In
considered. So the transmitter may bring in two digital
attenuators with 20dB of control range. To satisfy the gain
specification, several amplifiers of course need to be cascaded.
Amplifiers and passive mixer are the main cause of harmonic
spurious signals. Signal amplification is achieved mainly in
RF band. Only one amplifier is employed in IF band in order
to reduce the nonlinear impact of mixer and RF amplifiers. A
coupled microstrip RF filter is designed to suppress the spur
caused by LO leakage and the IMD signals.
The unit in RF band is always great challenge for the design
of transmitter [4], especially when frequency is up to 6GHz.
So simulation and measurement will be performed mainly in
RF band without IF unit.
The simulation results of the system gain and IMD products
with ADS are shown in Fig. 2
I_Probe I_Probe
Mixer I_Probe
I_Filt_Out I_RF_Out
b2_MIX I_Mix_Out
SideBand=BOTH

V_Mix_In V_Mix_Out V_Filt_Out V_RF_Out

P_nTone Term
PORT1 Term3
Num=1 BPF_Chebyshev Amplifier Amplifier Amplifier Num=3
Amplifier
b3_RF_BPF b4_RF_AMP b4_RF_AMP1 b4_RF_AMP2 Z=50 Ohm
b1_IF_AMP1

Var VAR
LO_in HARMONIC BALANCE Eqn
_VAR2
HarmonicBalance LO_Freq =4.4 GHz
P_1Tone HB2 F_Spacing =0.1 GHz
PORT2 Power_IF = -16 _dBm
Num=2 Power_LO =-5 _dBm
IF_Freq = 1.85 GHz

(a) Schematic of the RF transmitter in ADS

m6 m5 m4 m1 m2 m3
freq=4.400GHz freq=6.400GHz freq=6.300GHz indep(m1)= -20.000 indep(m2)= -6.000 indep(m3)= -16.000
dBm(V_RF_Out)=-65.200 dBm(V_RF_Out)=-45.698 dBm(V_RF_Out)=-1.352 plot_vs(Gain,Pin)=15.658 plot_vs(Gain,Pin)=14.755 plot_vs(Pout,Pin)=-0.400
50 15 20
m4 m1
0 10 m2
m5 15
Output Spectrum (dBm)

m6 5
-50 m3
Pout(dBm)

Gain(dB)
0 10
-100
-5
-150 5
-10
-200
-15 0
-250 -30 -25 -20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15
2 4 6 8 10
Pin(dBm)
Frequency(GHz)

(b) Simulated harmonic products of RF transmitter (c) Gain compression of RF transmitter

Figure 2. Simulations of the RF transmitter system

III. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

The prototype of the RF transmitter without PA and digital
attenuators as analyzed in ADS is shown in Fig. 3.

Figure 3. Prototype of RF transmitter

 Fig. 4 shows measurement result of output power versus
input power for gain compression. The output power
measured by spectrum analyzer is approximately -8.5dBm
when input power is -7dBm. The power loss caused by cables
in 6GHz band is measured to be nearly 6dB. The actual power
at transmitter output port can be computed to 14.5dBm as
input power -7dBm. There is not a significant difference
between measurement results and simulation ones.

24

22

20
Outpput PowerdBm)

18

16
Figure 5. Output spectrum of the transmitter
14
← P1dB at (-7, 8.45) with a two-tone input spacing 10MHz

12
The RF signal width is wide up to 500MHz including 5 RF
10 channels (6.05GHz, 6.15GHz, 6.25GHz, 6.35GHz, 6.45GHz).
← (-13, 3.31)
8
In 6.25GHz RF channel, the tested EVM (Error Vector
Magnitude) figure of the transmitter using 20Mbps 16QAM
6
-16 -14 -12 -10 -8 -6 -4 -2 0 modulated digital signal is less than 0.55%rms, and the
flatness of swept gain is better than 1dB. The performances
Input Power (dBm)
Figure 4. Gain curve of the transmitter measured in 6.25GHz RF channel band are shown in Fig. 6.

Fig.5 shows the output spectrum of the transmitter working

in linear range with a tow-tone input spacing 10MHz. The
level of IMD3 products is less than -55dBc. The tested IMD
performance is better than the required specification.

(a) Gain flatness measured by Agilent Spectrum Analyzer (b) EVM measured by Agilent 89600 Vector Signal Analyzer

Figure 6. Gain flatness and EVM measured in 6.25GHz RF channel

 The specification of the gain flatness and EVM measured in A high performance RF transmitter for high-capacity
five RF channels is listed in Table 2. microwave communication system is designed. The
TABLE 2 transmitter has the feature of high linearity, high frequency
GAIN FLATNESS AND EVM SPECIFICATION stability, high dynamic range, and low EVM, and is ideal for
RF Gain max EVM(%rms) future wireless communication system.
Frequency Flatness
(GHz) (dB) QPSK 16QAM 64QAM ACKNOWLEDGMENT
6.05 0.662 0.896 0.687 0.581 This work was supported in part by NSFC under Grant
6.15 0.828 0.846 0.627 0.527 60621002 and 60702027, 60921063 and in part by National
973 project 2010CB327400, by the National High-Tech
6.25 0.946 1.96 1.27 1.23
Project under Grant 2008AA01Z223, 2008ZX03005-001,
6.35 0.972 1.7 1.1 1.3 2009AA011503.
6.45 2.770 0.8 0.6 0.6 REFERENCES
The deterioration of gain flatness in 6.45GHz band is [1] Kai Chang, RF and Microwave Wireless systems. John Wiley & Sons
Inc., 2000.
caused by RF filter. At the edge near to 6.5GHz, there is a [2] Jianyi Zhou, Jianhong Chen, Jianing Zhao, Jianjun Wang, and Wei
small gain fluctuation when measuring the RF filter. So it can Kang, “Design of a high performance RF transceiver for WiMAX
be concluded that the RF transmitter performance could be basestation,” APMC 2005, vol 5, Dec. 2005.
[3] Pedro, J.C. and De Carvalho, N.B., “On the use of multitone techniques
improved better with filter redesigned. for assessing RF components' intermodulation distortion,” IEEE Trans.
MTT, vol 47, pp. 2393-2402, August 2002.
IV. CONCLUSION [4] Peter, Vizmuller, RF Design Guide: Systems, Circuits and Equations.
Artech House, 1954.