RF DESIGN FOR WIRELESS

COMMUNICATION
Dr. P. SAMUNDISWARY
Assistant Professor
Department of Electronics Engineering
School of Engineering and Technology
Pondicherry University
Pondicherry

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AGENDA

Motivation
Mobile Wireless Technology Trends
RF Design challenges
RF Communication Systems
Basic Building Blocks of RF System
RF Transmitters
RF Receivers
Transceivers
Crystal
Balun and Matching
Antenna
Radio Range
CMOS RF Design
RF MEMS Design
Recent Evolutions of Wireless System
RF Products
Conclusion
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MOTIVATION
Increase in demand for low-cost, smallform-factor, low-power transceivers
Proliferation of various wireless standards
pushes for multi-standard operation
CMOS is well suited for high levels of mixed
signal radio integration [2]
End goal: a low cost single chip radio
transceiver covering multiple RF standards
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MOBILE WIRELESS TECHNOLOGY

TRENDS

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RF DESIGN IS
CHALLENGING:MULTI-DISCIPLINE

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RF DESIGN IS
CHALLENGING:TRADE OFFs

RF circuits and transceivers must deal with numerous trade-offs.

Demand for higher performance, lower cost and greater functionality
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TECHNOLOGIES USED FOR RF

SYSTEM
GaAs:

High frequency
High power
Used in PA and front-end switches
Low yield, expensive to manufacture
Not integrated on silicon chips

Silicon bipolar and BiCMOS

Silicon CMOS, suitable for tens of GHz
SiGe
Possible replacement for GaAs
Can be integrated on silicon chips

RF COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS
Simplex RF System
A radio technology that allows only one-way
communication from a transmitter to a receiver
Examples: FM radio, Pagers, TV.

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Contd.
Half-duplex RF Systems
Operation mode of a radio communication system in which
each end can transmit and receive, but not simultaneously.
Note: The communication is bidirectional over the same
frequency, but unidirectional for the duration of a message.
The devices need to be transceivers. Applies to most TDD
and TDMA systems.
Examples: Walkie-talkie, wireless keyboard mouse

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Contd.
Full-duplex RF Systems
Radio systems in which each end can transmit and receive
simultaneously
Typically two frequencies are used to set up the
communication channel. Each frequency is used solely for
either transmitting or receiving. Applies to Frequency Division
Duplex (FDD) systems.
Example: Cellular phones, satellite communication

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WIRELESS COMMUNICATION
SYSTEM

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BASIC BUILDING BLOCKS OF RF

SYSTEMS

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RF TRANSMITTER DESIGN
ISSUES
Frequency accuracy and
stability
Ability to change fo rapidly
Modulation Fidelity
Power efficiency
Spectral Purity
-low spurious tones
-low noise emission

RF TRANSMITTERS
Function

Performance
Specification

Modulation

Accuracy

Frequency
Translation

Spectral
Emission

Power
Amplification

Output
Power Level

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RF TRANSMITTERS
Mixer-Based
Direct Conversion (Homodyne)
2-Stage Conversion (Heterodyne)
Both architectures can operate with constant and nonconstant envelope modulation
Well-suited for multi-standard operation

PLL-Based
Show promise with respect to elimination of discrete
components
Fundamentally limited to constant-envelope modulation
schemes not suitable for multi-standard operation
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DIRECT CONVERSION
Attractive due to simplicity of the signal path
suitable for high levels of integration
Output carrier frequency = local oscillator (LO)
frequency
Important drawback: LO disturbance by PA output

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DIRECT CONVERSION LO
PULLING

Noisy output of PA
corrupts
VCO
spectrum
-injection
pulling or injection
locking

VCO frequency shifts

toward frequency of
external stimulus
If
injected
noise
frequency close to
oscillator
natural
frequency, then LO
output
eventually
locks onto noise
frequency as noise
level increases
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DIRECT CONVERSION LO
FREQUENCY OFFSET TECHNIQUE
LO pulling can be alleviated by moving the PA output
spectrum sufficiently far from the LO frequency
LO offset can be achieved by mixing 2 VCO outputs
1 and 2 and filtering the result; leading to a carrier
frequency of 1+ 2, far from either 1 or 2
BPF1 must have high selectivity to suppress spurs of
the form m1+m2 to avoid degradation in
quadrature generation and spurs in the up-converted
signal

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DIRECT CONVERSION EXAMPLE

A 5-GHz CMOS transceiver front end
chipset [T. Liu, et. al ]
Homodyne architecture for
better integration, lower cost
and
lower
power
consumption
Uses on-chip quadrature
VCO and buffers to improve
frequency purity
On-chip
VCO
minimizes
radiation
leakage
from
strong PA output back to
core oscillator
Buffers isolate sensitive VCO
circuit
from
high-power,
large voltage or current
swing circuit blocks
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2-STAGE UP-CONVERSION
Another
approach
to
solving the LO pulling
problem
Up-convert in 2 stages so
PA output spectrum is far
from VCO frequency.
Quadrature modulation at IF
(1), up-convert to 1+ 2
by mixing and filtering.
BPF1 suppresses the IF
harmonics, while BPF2
removes the
unwanted
sideband 1- 2 .
Advantages:
no LO
pulling; better I/Q matching
(less crosstalk between the
2 bit streams).
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2-STAGE CONVERSION EXAMPLE

A Dual Band (GSM 900-MHz/DCS1800 1.8GHz) CMOS Transmitter [B. Razavi]
Exploits similarities of
GSM
and
DCS1800
standards (modulation,
channel spacing, antenna
duplexing) to reduce
hardware
2
quadrature
up
converters
driven
by
450MHz LO to generate
quadrature phases of IF
signal
IF signal routed to singlesideband mixers driven
by
a
1350MHz
LO,
producing either 900MHz
or 1800MHz signal
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RF RECEIVER ISSUES
Receive Sensitivity
Indicates the level of signal strength that must be
present to correctly receive data at a specified biterror rate.
Receive Sensitivity = Nt + Ns + 10log(BW) + SNRmin

Nt is the thermal noise floor

Ns is the system noise figure
BW is the symbol rate
SNRmin is the minimum signal-to-noise- ratio required for a given bi
error rate

RF RECEIVER ISSUES
Spurious Responses
Super heterodyne receivers have a
tendency to receive signals they are not
tuned to
Image frequencies are signals that are
produced as a result of the generation of
intermediate frequencies

CRYSTAL RECEIVER
Block diagram
Single tuned circuit; poor selectivity
No gain; poor sensitivity
Requires large aerial and earth; only
receives strong signals

MAIN ANALOG COMPONENTS

OF RF RECEIVER -1
AMPLIFIIERS
Low-noise amplifiers (LNAs) in the first stages.
Automatic gain control (AGC) needed to cope with different signal
levels

FILTERS
Sufficient selectivity can be achieved by fixed (RF or IF) filters based
on special technologies (SAW( Surface Acoustic Wave), crystal,
mechanical)
or active analog filters operating on based band or low pass center
frequencies
or multirate digital filters up to some hundreds of MHz range.
Special complex filters, phase splitters can be used to suppress
certain frequency range from the negative part of the frequency
axis.It is used in special receiver architectures

MAIN ANALOG COMPONENTS

OF RECEIVER-2
MIXER
Complex mixer (I/Q
,Quadrature ): pure
frequency translation by
the local oscillator
frequency.
Real Mixer: produces
the
combination
of
frequency translations
in both directions

MAIN ANALOG COMPONENTS

OF RECEIVER-3
OSCILLATOR

Voltage (or current) controlled oscillators

(VCO,ICO,DCO) are used to generate the
LO signals in a tunable manner.
In a communication transceiver, the
frequency synthesizer is one of the main
blocks .It is used for generating all the
needed LO signals in a controllable
manner

SUPERHETERODYNE RF
RECEIVER

DRAWBACKS
Some parts are difficult to fabricate
RF filter, IF Filter, Oscillator

Power consumption is high

External components
Several sub modules for matching

Complicated structure
Spurious Responses
LO and IF signals and harmonics and mixtures
leaking may cause problems

DIRECT CONVERSION RF
RECEIVER

ADVANTAGES
Not so much spurious responses
Simple structure, no IF filters
Zero IF principle

CURRENT TRENDS IN
INTEGRATED TRANSCEIVERS
Both direct and 2-stage architectures are used
(with modifications for better integration and
multi-standard operation)
Direct architecture achieves a low-cost
solution with a high level of integration
2-stage results in better performance (ie.
reduced LO pulling) at the expense of increased
complexity and hence higher cost of
implementation [5],[7],[9],[10],[11]
Transmitter and receiver designed concurrently
to enable hardware and possibly power sharing
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GENERIC RF TRANSCEIVER

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SAMPLE TRANSCEIVER

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CRYSTAL

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BALUN AND MATCHING

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ANTENNA

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EXTENDING THE RANGE OF RF

SYSTEM

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RADIO RANGE FACTORS

Antenna
Sensitivity
Output power
Selectivity (radio pollution)
Environment

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CMOS RF DESIGN
Submicron MOSFETs, 180,130, 90 nm today, very fast,
fmax>100GHz, perform well up to 10 GHz or more
Good linearity for higher signal swing
Upper metal layers far from Si substrate reduce
substrate losses
Lower substrate doping helps to isolate RF blocks and
reduce losses
Large digital bocks (DSP & control) can be integrated on
one chip
CMOS cheaper from other technologies (BiCMOS,
GaAs, .. )
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RF MEMS DESIGN
orders of magnitude smaller size than present
off-chip passive devices
better performance than other single-chip
solutions
potentially large reduction in power consumption
alternative
transceiver
architectures
that
maximize the use of high-Q, frequency selective
devices for improved performance

MEMS based RECEIVER Front End

RECENT EVOLUTION OF
WIRELESS SYSTEMS

3X reduction in PCB size

4X reduction in radio size
4X reduction in component
counts
Multi-band operations

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THE FIRST SINGLE CHIP 5-GHz

TRANSCEIVER FOR 802.11 a

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(D. Su et al., )

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EVOLUTION OF WiFi RF SoC

Using scaled CMOS only justified when integrating with large DSP

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RF TRANSCEIVER PRODUCTS
XBee
XStream
XTend

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XTend (1 Watt/900 MHz)

long-range OEM RF modules
Power output: 1 mW - 1 Watt
(0 - 30 dBm), software
selectable
Indoor/Urban range: Up to
3000 ft (900 m)
Outdoor/RF
line-of-sight
range: up to 40 miles (64 km)
RF data rate: 9.6 or 115.2
Kbps
Interface data rate: Up to
230.4 Kbps
Receiver sensitivity: -110
dBm (@ 9600 bps)

XStream (2.4 GHz)

Best Value OEM RF Modules

XBee(2.4GHZ)
RF modules utilizing the ZigBee PRO
PARAMETER

VALUE

RF Data Rate

250,000 bps

Supply Voltage

2.8 3.4 V

Number of
Channels

16 Direct Sequence
Channels

Indoor/Urban
Range

up to 100 ft. (30 m)

Outdoor Range

up to 300 ft.(100 m)

Operating
Frequency

2.4 GHz

CONCLUSION
Recently, many RF CMOS designs performed
successfully for multi-standard operation.
Miniaturization of RF system is possible by using
MEMS technology
Complete understanding of the wireless system
standards to optimise the system and avoid
unneccessary over design

BARRIERS TO FUTURE
GROWTH
Irreducible size of antennas
Rising level of RF emissions interference problems and safety
concerns
Finite spectrum
Lack of standards and interoperability of
hardware

REFERENCE
[1]. B. Razavi, RF Transmitter Architectures and Circuits, IEEE CICC, pp. 197-204,
1999.
[2]. A. Abidi, et. al., The Future of CMOS Wireless Transceivers, ISSCC, pp. 118-119,
Feb. 1997.
[3]. J. Rudell, et. al., Recent Developments in High Integration Multi-Standard CMOS
Transceivers for Personal Communication Systems, IEEE 1998.
[4]. S. Kim, et. al., A Single-Chip 2.4GHz Low-Power CMOS Receiver and Transmitter
for WPAN Applications, IEEE 2003.
[5]. J. Weldon, et. al., A 1.75-GHz Highly Integrated Narrow-Band CMOS Transmitter
With Harmonic-Rejection Mixers, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, Vol. 36, No.
12, Dec. 2001.
[6]. T. Liu, et. al., 5-GHz CMOS Radio Transceiver Front-End Chipset, IEEE Journal of
Solid-State Circuits, Vol. 35, No. 12, Dec. 2000.
[7] Y. Xu, C. Boone, L. Pileggi, Configurable Analog Integrated Circuits Based on a SiGe
Dots Implementation Platform, Carnegie Mellon University Center for Silicon
System Implementation Technical Report Series, CSSI 03-03, February 2003
[8].B.Razavi, A 300-GHZ Fundamental Oscillator in 65-nm CMOS Technology,
Symposium on VLSI Circuits Dig. Of Tech. Papers,pp.113-114,June 2010.

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