Dung Trinh, PhD HCMUT / 2023

Chapter 7
Transceiver Architecture

Trinh Xuan Dung, PhD

[email protected]

Department of Telecommunications
Faculty of Electrical and Electronics Engineering
Ho Chi Minh city University of Technology
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Contents

1. General Considerations
2. Receiver Architectures
3. Superhyterodyne receiver
4. Direct Conversion receiver
5. Exercises

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1. General Considerations
❖ The wireless communications environment is often called “hostile” to emphasize the
severe constraints that it imposes on transceiver design.
❖ The most important constraint originates from the limited channel bandwidth
allocated to each user (e.g., 200 kHz in GSM). This effects:
• The transmitter must employ narrowband modulation and amplification.
• The receiver must be able to process the desired channel while sufficiently
rejecting strong in-band and out-of-band interferers.
▪ Firstly since an interferer may fall only one or two channels away from the
desired signal, the filter must provide a very high selectivity (i.e., a high Q).
▪ Secondly since a different carrier frequency may be allocated to the user at
different times, such a filter would need a variable, yet precise, center
frequency—a property very difficult to implement.

Transmitter front ends of a wireless system Receiver front ends of a wireless system
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1. General Considerations
❖ Transmitter: ❖ Receiver:
• Output power • Sensitivity (noise)
• Spurious emission • Gain
• Linearity • Linearity
• Efficiency • Selectivity (Immunity to Interference)
• Complexity • Complexity
❖ Requirements of a receiver front-end:
• Amplification to compensate for transmission losses.
• Selectivity to separate the desired signal from others.
• Tunability to select the desired signal.
• Conversion to digital domain.

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1. General Considerations - Transmitter

❖ The non-linearity of the transmitter power amplifier may cause out-of-band emission
and must be well controlled
• The sideband of a modulated signal rise significantly as the power amplifier
enters compression and saturation region.
• The power amplifier must be sufficiently linearized.
• Or a strong filter will need to be used before the signal is transmitted to the
antenna.

A very low-loss output

Transmitter front ends of a wireless system
filter for base stations

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1. General Considerations - Interference

❖ Interference: unwanted out-of-band or in-band signals.
❖ In practical RF system designs, interference may become the limiting factor in system
performance. They must be taken into account in the design phase

❖ A case study: LightSquared is a company that tries to develop a wholesale 4G

wireless network integrated with satellite coverage across the United States.
• In 2004, LightSquared acquired authorization from FCC to use the 1525 – 1559
MHz spectrum for its broadband 4G network. The Global Positioning System
(GPS) uses the 1559 – 1610 MHz, which is really close.
• After LightSquared started deploying some of its base-stations, people noticed
strong interference to some existing GPS receivers. The GPS community has
since opposed the deployment of LightSquared networks. Interestingly, only
those GPS receivers without a front-end filter were affected.
• In 2012, FCC moved to bar LightSquared’s network because interference issues.
• In May 2012, LightSquared filed for bankruptcy. LightSquared has since lost $
1.6 Billion and the figure is still rising…

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1. General Considerations – Frontend Filtering

❖ Sometimes interferers are too close to the desired signal that the front-end filter
cannot be completely eliminate the interferer.
• The required filter may be too narrow-band that its loss can not be tolerated by
the receiver.
❖ The front-end filter usually selects a band of frequency around the desired signal,
allowing some interferers to pass through.
• Any receiver components must be linear enough to accommodate the interferer
alongside the desired signal.
• Recall the non-linearity discussion in the RF Amplifiers lectures; strong
interferers may desensitize or saturate the first receiver amplifier.

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2. Receiver Architectures
❖ The main function of a receiver is the demodulation of a wanted signal (channel) in
the presence of undesired interferers and noise.
❖ Due to the strong attenuation during air transmission, the RF signal has to be
amplified and recovered.
❖ Taking into account scenarios with varying attenuation, a wide dynamic range is
required for the detection of signals with high data-rates.

Signal path from transmitter to receiver

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2. Receiver Architectures
❖ Channel selection: selects the desired signal channel and rejects the interferers in the
other channels.
• All of the stages in the receiver chain that precede channel-selection filtering
must be sufficiently linear to avoid compression or excessive intermodulation.
• Channel-selection filtering is extremely difficult at the input carrier frequency, it
must be deferred to some other point along the chain where the center frequency
of the desired channel is substantially lower and hence the required filter Q’s are
more reasonable.
❖ Band selection: selects the entire receive band and rejects “out-of-band” interferers
thereby suppressing components that may be generated by users that do not belong to
the standard of interest.

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2. Receiver Architectures
❖ Example 1: A 900-MHz GSM receiver with 200-kHz channel spacing must tolerate an
alternate adjacent channel blocker 20 dB higher than the desired signal. Calculate the Q
of a second-order LC filter required to suppress this interferer by 35dB.
❖ Solution:
The impedance of a second-order RLC tank is written as
𝑠𝑅𝐿
𝐻 𝑠 =
𝑅𝐿𝐶𝑠 2 + 𝐿𝑠 + 𝑅
The magnitude squared of 𝐻 𝑗𝜔 is thus given by
2
𝐿2 𝜔2
𝐻 𝑗𝜔 =
1 − 𝐿𝐶𝜔 2 2 + 𝐿2 𝜔 2 Τ𝑅2
For an attenuation of 35dB (56.2) at 900.4MHz 𝐻 𝑗𝜔 2 = 𝑅2 Τ56.22 . Then:
𝐿2 𝜔2 2 2
1
2 ≃ 1 − 900.4 900 Τ × 2 = 2.5 × 10−10
𝑅 56.2
The quality factor of the filter is:
𝑅
𝑄= = 63200
𝜔𝐿

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2. Receiver Architectures
❖ Issue #1: BPF or LNA First?
• Trade-off between suppressing inter-modulation and NF.
• BPF first: better interference rejection but higher NF due to the insertion loss of
the LNA.
• LNA first: better NF but receiver can be desensitisized due to interferers.
• Interferers are more important issue. Therefore BPF is place in front of LNA

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2. Receiver Architectures
❖ Issue #2: Channel Selection: not at RF.
▪ GSM example: channel bandwidth is 200KHz, RF carriers at 935-960 MHz.
6
▪ Filter 𝑄 = 10 𝑓𝑅𝐹ൗ𝐵𝑊 = 10 950×10 ൗ200×103 = 47500 . It is impossible to
achieve such high Q at RF.
▪ For GSM, the band is 25MHz so the Q required is 𝑄 = 10 𝑓𝑅𝐹ൗ𝐵𝑊 =
6
10 950×10 ൗ25×106 = 380 which is more reasonable.

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2. Receiver Architectures

❖ Issue #3: Image Frequency.

▪ There are two input frequencies
which down-convert to the same IF
frequency. One is the desired
channel and the other is called
“Image Frequency”.
▪ It is easier to achieve high Q BPF at
lower frequency but Image
Rejection becomes difficult.

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2. Receiver Architectures
❖ Issue #3: Image Frequency.
▪ Trade-off between sensitivity (image rejection) and selectivity (channel
selection) indicates the choice of IF:
• High IF frequency makes image rejection simple and channel selection
difficult.
• Low IF frequency makes image rejection difficult and channel selection
simple.
▪ Both image reject BPF and channel select BPF are difficult to implement on chip
which makes heterodyne receiver less attractive for monolithic RF transceiver.

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2. Super-Hyterodyne Receiver
❖ Super-heterodyne Receiver:
▪ To relax the trade-off between the sensitivity (image rejection) and selectivity
(channel selection), a second IF can be introduced to the heterodyne receiver
architecture which results in a Super-Heterodyne receiver.
▪ A Super-Heterodyne receiver is a heterodyne receiver with a dual IFs.
▪ A Super-Heterodyne receiver relaxes the BPF Q at each stage by having more
filter stages
950𝑀 100𝑀 10𝑀
𝑄𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑎𝑙𝑙 = 10 × 10 × 10 = 95 × 100 × 500 = 4.75 × 106
100𝑀 10𝑀 200𝑘

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2. Super-Hyterodyne Receiver

❖ Super-heterodyne Receiver: Image Frequency Issue

▪ The input spurious tone at 𝜔𝐼𝑀2 = 𝜔𝑅𝐹 + 2𝜔𝐿𝑂2 (at input of 1st mixer) will
cause a secondary image tone at 𝜔𝐿𝑂2 + 𝜔𝐼𝐹2 at the input of the second mixer.
▪ Example: Given that 𝜔𝑅𝐹 = 950𝑀𝐻𝑧, 𝜔𝐿𝑂1 = 1050𝑀𝐻𝑧, 𝜔𝐿𝑂2 = 110𝑀𝐻𝑧

𝜔𝐼𝐹1 = 100𝑀𝐻𝑧 𝜔𝐼𝐹2 = 10𝑀𝐻𝑧

𝜔𝐼𝑀2 = 𝜔𝐼𝐹2 + 𝜔𝐿𝑂1 + 2𝜔𝐿𝑂2 = 10 + 110 + 1050 = 1170 = 𝜔𝑅𝐹 + 2𝜔𝐿𝑂2

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2. Super-Hyterodyne Receiver
❖ More filters → More Image Rejection → More filters
▪ High Q filters are hard to build and expensive.
▪ Use more filters each with low Q.
▪ But that require more mixing in the receiving chain which leads to image
problems and need more filters.
▪ Solutions:
• Image Reject Receiver
o Harley Receiver.
o Weaver Receiver.
• Homodyne (direct conversion, zero-IF) – DC Offset.
• Digital IF.

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2. Super-Hyterodyne Receiver

❖ Channel Selection by adjusting LO Frequency

▪ Tunable high Q BPFs are difficult and expensive to implement. Rather than
tuning the BPF center frequency, the LO is changed depending on the desired
channel.
▪ For example: FM radios use 10.7MHz as the fixed IF, to tune to the station at
101.3MHz, the LO is adjusted to 112.0MHz.

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2. Super-Hyterodyne Receiver
❖ High-Side LO vs Low-side LO:
▪ Advantages of using high side LO:
• The ease in tuning the LO over the desired band of frequencies.
• The LO frequency can be changed over a wide range of frequencies for a
high side LO compared to a low side LO.
• Tuning the LO is often done using a varactor. Due to the limited linearity of
the varactor, choice of the high side LO results the improved linearity of the
LO frequency with change in bias voltage.
▪ Advantage of using low side LO:
• Lower noise and power dissipation since operating at low frequencies.
▪ Another important consideration in the choice of high-side LO and low-side LO
is the image frequencies that will be picked up. The choice of high-side LO and
low-side LO might be made based on the relative quietness of the image band in
each case.

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2. Super-Hyterodyne Receiver
❖ Digital IF receiver:
▪ The idea is to perform the demanding channel filtering completely in the digital
domain.
▪ Thus, simple RF filters may be employed for coarse band selection.
▪ The major advantage is the flexibility of the architecture.
▪ The receiver can be reconfigured for a variety of systems with different
modulation types, channel frequencies and bandwidths meeting the demands of
different standards.

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2. Super-Hyterodyne Receiver
❖ 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.
▪ After the first mixer, the signal is digitized by the ADC.
▪ The quantization and thermal noise of the ADC cannot exceed a few uV for a
good receiver.
▪ The linearity of the ADC must be sufficiently high to suppress the
intermodulation outputs from corrupting the desired signal.
▪ Choice of the first IF is dictated by the speed of the ADC.
▪ Typically, first IF is around 75MHz with the ADC running at 150 to 200 MSps
and 9 to 11 bit resolution.

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2. Receiver Architectures
❖ Example: Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) – 2G cellular standard:
• A GSM system has 124 pairs of simplex (meaning only transmit or only receive)
channels, each of 200-kHz wide.
• Selecting a channel (0.2 MHz) at the RF frequency (~900 MHz) is very difficult,
if not impossible.

GSM Frames

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5. Exercises

Exercise 1: Consider the mixer circuit shown below.

a. Assume that 𝑣𝐿𝑂 controls the state of the diodes at all times and that the diodes are ideal.
Derive an expression for the output voltage. Express your result in terms of a switching
function 𝑝(𝑡), and give the Fourier cosine series for your switching function.
b. What frequency components will appear at the output of this mixer?

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Q&A

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