Radio Frequency Transceiver Design

http://www.ek.isy.liu.se/courses/tsek04/

Jerzy Dbrowski
Division of Electronic Devices Department of Electrical Engineering (ISY) Linkping University e-mail: jdab@isy.liu.se

J.Dbrowski, RF TRx Design

Objectives of the course

Understand the contemporary wireless
communication standards at the physical layer Strengthen the knowledge of RF transceiver architectures Learn design methods and techniques for RF front-end design at the system level Get familiar with professional design tools
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J.Dbrowski, RF TRx Design

Organization of the course

Lectures 10 x 2h Laboratory work 4 x 4h

(by Jonas Fritzin and Amin Ojani) Lab Manual by Jonas Fritzin Project work: RF transceiver design - Part 1. Synthesis by analytical model - Part 2. Simulation and verification by ADS Course book: Qizheng Gu, RF System Design of Transceivers for Wireless Communication, Springer 2005

J.Dbrowski, RF TRx Design

Outline of the lecture

Wireless communication systems today RF transceiver architecture Architectures
- receiver - transmitter

Summary
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J.Dbrowski, RF TRx Design

Bit Rate
kb/sec

Wireless Communication Systems Today

LTE/WiMax In-door 4G directions UMTS

100,000 UWB 10,000 1000 100 10 1

10m

WLAN
Bluetooth

CDMA2000
3G directions Cellular

DECT PHS CT1/CT2 Cordless Zigbee 100m

GSM IS-54/IS-95 PDC Paging 1000m 10km 100km

GPS Satellite

1000km

Range
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J.Dbrowski, RF TRx Design

Wireless Communication Systems Today (contd)

Power (mobile) 10W 1W 100mW 10mW 1mW
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J.Dbrowski, RF TRx Design

GSM DECT DCS-1800 PCS-1900

UMTS CDMA2000 WLAN 802.11b/g WiMax 802.16e Bluetooth

WLAN 802.11a

UWB Zigbee
2 3 4 5 6 Frequency GHz
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Overview of Standards
Standard GSM DCS-1800 DECT IS-136 D-AMPS IS-95 cdmaOne Bluetooth 802.11b (DSSS) WCDMA (UMTS) Access Scheme/Dupl TDMA/ FDMA/ TDD TDMA/ FDMA/ TDD TDMA/ FDMA/ TDD TDMA/ FDMA/FDD CDMA/ FDMA/FDD FHSS/TDD CDMA/TDD W-CDMA/ TDCDMA/F/TDD Frequency band (MHz) 890-915 (UL) 935-960 (DL) 1710-1785 (UL) 1805-1850 (DL) 1880-1900 824-849 (RL) 869-894 (FL) 824-849 (RL) 869-894 (FL) 2400-2483 2400-2483 1920-1980 (UL) 2110-2170 (DL) Channel Spacing 200 kHz 200 kHz 1728 kHz 30 kHz 1250 kHz 1 MHz 20 MHz 5 MHz Frequency Accuracy 90 Hz 90 Hz 50 Hz 200 Hz N/A 20 ppm 25 ppm 0.1 ppm Modulation Technique GMSK GMSK GMSK /4 QPSK OQPSK GFSK QPSK/CCK QPSK, 16/64QAM Rate (kb/s) 270.8 270.8 1152 48 1228 1000 1, 2, 11 Mb/s 3840 (max) Peak Power 0.8, 2, 5, 8 W 0.8, 2, 5, 8 W 250 mW 0.8, 1, 2, 3 W N/A 1,4,100 mW 1W 0.125, 0.25, 0.5, 2W

J.Dbrowski, RF TRx Design

RF Transceiver at glance
Rx Frontend Duplexer or switch Tx Frontend DAC ADC Digital Baseband

RF frontend analog, high frequencies Baseband - digital today (DSP), low frequencies Mostly common antenna duplexer/switch
( full/half duplex )
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Todays communication radio

RF front-end Analog BB Digital BB Power management I/Os Peripherals

Cellular handsets use many modules to maintain different functions and operation modes
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Digital Transmitter

ADC Baseband signal

Modulation & DSP

DAC

Upconverter /Modulator

PA Power control

RF Filter

Carrier Digital baseband section (compression, coding, modulation, shaping )

RF section (up-conversion, filtering, power gain and control)

Tradeoff between power efficiency and spectral efficiency

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Digital Receiver
RF Filter LNA Down Converter IF/BB Filter Gain control

ADC

Demodulator & DSP

Carrier

Baseband signal

RF frontend (image rejection, low noise, gain control, down conversion, channel selection)

Digital baseband section (equalization, demodulation, decoding, decompression)

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Basic receiver and transmitter architectures

Superheterodyne Receiver Homodyne (Zero-IF Receiver) Low-IF Receiver One-step Transmitter Two-step Transmitter Offset-frequency Transmitter

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Superheterodyne receiver
Double conversion - tradeoffs mitigated
(good sensitivity and selectivity, good image rejection)
LNA RF Filter IR Filter IF Filter I LO2 Q IFA LP Filter

ADC

LO1

Gain control

Discrete IR and IF filters not amenable for integration Low impedance of those filters raise power dissipation in LNA and first mixer (matching for off-chip needed)
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Superheterodyne receiver (contd)

Receiver band fIF

Bw
RF filter selects band, rejects off-band signals,

fLO,k-1 fLO,k

fk-1 fk

IR filter rejects off-band products, it has same band as RF filter

LO1 frequency is adjusted to select the channel for downconversion

IF filter selects channel, adjacent channels are partly suppressed

fIF

Constant intermediate frequency fIF

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J.Dbrowski, RF TRx Design

Homodyne receiver (Zero-IF)

Direct conversion
(fewer components, image filtering avoided no IR and IF filters)
LNA RF Filter I LO Leakage LO Q DC removal + LPF ADC

fLO = fRF

fIF = 0

Large DC offset can corrupt weak signal or saturate LNA (LO mixes itself), notch filters or adaptive DC offset cancellation eg. by DSP baseband control Flicker noise (1/f) can be difficult to distinguish from signal Channel selection with LPF, easy to integrate, (noise-linearity-power tradeoff are critical, even-order distortions low-freq. beat differential circuits useful)
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Homodyne receiver (contd)

Receiver band

Bw
RF filter selects band, rejects off-band signals,

fLO,k = fk fk-1 fk f

fIF = 0

Wanted channel is corrupted by its mirror, IQ downconversion is needed to separate them with Hilbert transform LP filter selects channel, It is also anti-alias filter for ADC

fIF = 0

f
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Useful for wideband systems, DC and 1/f noise can be removed by HPF
J.Dbrowski, RF TRx Design

Low-IF receiver
Tradeoff between heterodyne and homodyne
LNA RF Filter I LO Leakage LO Q supports IQ rejection Gain control Polyphase filter Amp ADC

DC offset and 1/f do not corrupt the signal, like in the superheterodyne, still DC offset must be removed /saturation threat But image problem reintroduced / close image ! Still even-order distortions can result in low-freq. beat differential circuits useful

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Low-IF receiver (contd)

RF band filter
In-band image channel Desired channel

Close-image problem
Image and desired channel signal overlap at f IF frequency, but due to I and Q paths and Hilbert transform the image can be suppressed More severe problem than in zero-IF since the image can be much stronger than the signal.

fLO,k

fIF

fIF

fk

Tough requirements for IQ match if image is large, otherwise signal strongly corrupted

fIF = BWch typical

Good for GSM std. since the adjacent channel only 9dB larger, so rejection of 20..30 dB enough
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IQ downconversion in Zero-IF
Down conversion to zero with one mixer
Inherent mirror spectrum

Down conversion to zero with quadrature IQ mixer

-0

-0

-0

0 0 Aliasing by mirror

and 0 0
j

IQ mirror cancellation after using Hilbert transform

J.Dbrowski, RF TRx Design

YQLP () e

sgn( )

YILP ()
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IQ downconversion in Zero-IF (contd)

For any modulation scheme:
sIQ (t) = A(t)cos(0t + (t)) = aI (t)cos0t - aQ (t)sin0t sin0t cos0t
LPF

aI (t)

sIQ (t)
LPF

-aQ (t)

BB signal decoded as I and Q component, but can be degraded by IQ mismatch (cross-talk)

J.Dbrowski, RF TRx Design

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IQ downconversion in Low-IF
Down conversion with one mixer
Inherent mirror spectrum

Down conversion with quadrature IQ mixer

-0

-0

-0

0 0 Aliasing by image

and 0 0
j

IQ image cancellation after using Hilbert transform

J.Dbrowski, RF TRx Design

YQLP () e

sgn( )

YILP ()
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Direct conversion transmitter

LO Leakage of PA

Asinct Base band I

Acosct

Leakage of LO BPF PA Power control

Matching Network

High-power signal

Duplexer or Switch

Up-conversion is performed in
one step, fLO= fc

Simple modulation, e.g. QPSK can be

done in the same process

Receiver
Also effect on Rx can be critical

BPF suppresses harmonics LO must be shielded to reduce corruption I and Q paths must be symmetrical and
LO in quadrature, otherwise crosstalk
J.Dbrowski, RF TRx Design

FDD or TDD, respectively

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Two-step transmitter
Advantage:

IF frequency sin1t I
BPF1 BPF2

Better IQ matching since 1 is lower Carrier far from LOs frequency

cos1t

PA 1+ 2 Power control

Q cos2t
Suppresses harmonics of 1

Removes sideband at 1- 2 but must have high Q-factor up to 60dB as 2nd modulator outputs equal sidebands

J.Dbrowski, RF TRx Design

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Two-step transmitter (contd)

SSB generation with quadrature scheme

cos 1t cos 2 t sin 1t sin 2 t = cos(1 + 2 )t

sin2t cos2t
LPF BPF PA 1+ 2 Power control

LPF

cos1t sin1t

BPF helps to remove sideband at (1-2) due to mismatch, but requirements for Q relaxed
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J.Dbrowski, RF TRx Design

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Offset-PLL transmitter
Ref LO

fref = fVCO - fLO Low noise at output

BPF
LO Offset mixer

I
PFD LPF VCO

Q cos0t sin0t
900 BPF

PA Power control

The PLL loop forces the IQ mixers to minimize their wideband noise mainly introduced by BB signals. Mainly the VCO contributes noise at the RF output. Pulling of LO is avoided
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Problem of carrier leakage

Asinct
Leakage of LO

Q Acosct I to BB
Calibration feedback BPF PA

Wanted transmitted signal

Carrier falls in band

fRF Constellation are destroyed by offset and also EVM rises

Tx measures output when BB signal is absent and introduces offset in BB stage to compensate for the carrier leakage

aI (t) aI (t) + I aQ (t) aQ (t) + Q

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Multi-standard flexible Tx
Amplitude

in(t)

Phase DAC

Ain(t)
LPF

DAC LPF
Envelope detector

Feedback reduces IMD (Amp-Phase imbalance)

d/dt

AM PFD Ref LO
Loop Filter

VCO

PA

Ain(t )cos(0t + in(t))

Band

Multi Mod divider

Modulator

Two-point PM modulation spectrum controlled at BB

J.Dbrowski, RF TRx Design

AM and PM separated (EER technique) High efficiency PA with feedback RF Filters eliminated
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Summary
Many wireless communication systems (mobile,
cordless, WLAN, GPS, ) coexist Variety of transceiver architectures represent different trade-offs in performance Digital baseband makes A/D and D/A conversion compulsory Design of a receiver part more critical than of a transmitter, especially for full-duplex

J.Dbrowski, RF TRx Design

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