Chapter Outline

Heterodyne Direct-Conversion
Receivers Receivers
 Problem of Image  LO Leakage and Offsets
 Mixing Spurs  Even-Order Nonlinearity
 Sliding-IF RX  I/Q Mismatch

Image-Reject and Transmitter

Low-IF Receivers Architecture
 Hartley and Weaver Receivers  TX Baseband Processing
 Low-IF Receivers  Direct-Conversion TX
 Polyphase Filters  Heterodyne and Sliding-IF TX

Chapter 4 Transceiver Architectures 1

 General Considerations: Narrow Channel Bandwidth

 Narrow channel bandwidth impacts the RF design of the transceiver.

Chapter 4 Transceiver Architectures 2

 Can We Simply Filter the Interferers to Relax the
Receiver Linearity Requirement?

 First, the filter must provide a very high Q

 Second, the filter would need a variable, yet precise center frequency

Chapter 4 Transceiver Architectures 3

 Channel Selection and Band Selection

 All of the stages in the receiver chain that precede channel-selection filtering
must be sufficiently linear
 Channel selection must be deferred to some other point where center
frequency is lower and hence required Q is more reasonable
 Most receiver front ends do incorporate a “band-select” filter

Chapter 4 Transceiver Architectures 4

 Duplexer Characteristics

 The front-end band-select filter suffers from a trade-off between its selectivity
and its in-band loss because the edges of the band-pass frequency response
can be sharpened only by increasing the order of the filter.
 Front-end loss directly raises the NF of the entire receiver

Chapter 4 Transceiver Architectures 5

 TX-RX Feedthrough

 In full-duplex standards, the TX and the RX operate concurrently.

 With a 1-W TX power, the leakage sensed by LNA can reach -20dBm, dictating
a substantially higher RX compression point.

Chapter 4 Transceiver Architectures 6

 An Example of TX-RX Leakage

Explain how a band-pass filter following the LNA can alleviate the TX-RX leakage
in a CDMA system.

Solution:
As depicted in below, if the BPF provides additional rejection in the TX band, the linearity
required of the rest of the RX chain is proportionally relaxed. The LNA compression point,
however, must still be sufficiently high.

Chapter 4 Transceiver Architectures 7

 Basic Heterodyne Receivers

 “Heterodyne” receivers employ an LO frequency unequal to ωin and hence a

nonzero IF
 A Mixer performing downconversion.
 Due to its high noise, the downconversion mixer is preceded by a low-noise
amplifier
Chapter 4 Transceiver Architectures 8
 How Does a Heterodyne Receiver Cover a Given
Frequency Band?

 Constant LO: each RF channel is downconverted to a different IF channel

 Constant IF: LO frequency is variable, all RF channels within the band of

interest translated to a single value of IF.
Chapter 4 Transceiver Architectures 9
 Basic Heterodyne Receivers: Problem of Image

 Two spectra located symmetrically around ωLO are downconverted to the IF

Chapter 4 Transceiver Architectures 10

 An Example of Image (Ⅰ)

Suppose two channels at ω1 and ω2 have been received and ω1 < ω2. Study the
downconverted spectrum as the LO frequency varies from below ω1 to above ω2.

Solution: ωLO < ω1 ωLO slightly above ω1

Chapter 4 Transceiver Architectures 11

 An Example of Image (Ⅱ)

Suppose two channels at ω1 and ω2 have been received and ω1 < ω2. Study the
downconverted spectrum as the LO frequency varies from below ω1 to above ω2.

Solution:
ωLO midway between ω1 and ω2 ωLO > ω2

Chapter 4 Transceiver Architectures 12

 Another Example of Image

Formulate the downconversion above using expressions for the desired signal
and the image.

Solution: and

We observe that the components at ωin +ωLO and ωim +ωLO are removed by low-pass filtering,
and those at ωin - ωLO = -ωIF and ωim - ωLO = +ωIF coincide.
Chapter 4 Transceiver Architectures 13
 Image Rejection

 The most common approach is to precede the mixer with an “image-reject filter”
 A filter with high image rejection typically appears between the LNA and the
mixer so that the gain of the LNA lowers the filter’s contribution to the receiver
noise figure
 The linearity and selectivity required of the image-reject filter have dictated
passive, off-chip implementations.

Chapter 4 Transceiver Architectures 14

 Image Rejection versus Channel Selection

 A high IF allows substantial rejection of the image.

 A low IF helps with the suppression of in-band interferers.

Chapter 4 Transceiver Architectures 15
 An Example of Noise Figure in Receiver

An engineer is to design a receiver for space applications with no concern for

interferers. The engineer constructs the heterodyne front end shown in figure
below (left), avoiding band-select and image-select filters. Explain why this design
suffers from a relatively high noise figure.
Even in the absence of interferers, the thermal noise produced by the antenna and the LNA
in the image band arrives at the input of the mixer. Thus, the desired signal, the thermal
noise in the desired channel, and the thermal noise in the image band are downconverted to
IF, leading to a higher noise figure for the receiver (unless the LNA has such a limited
bandwidth that it suppresses the noise in the image band). An image-reject filter would
remove the noise in the image band. We return to this effect in Chapter 6.

Chapter 4 Transceiver Architectures 16

 Dual Downconversion (Ⅰ)

 The front-end filter selects the band while providing some image rejection as
well (Point B)
Chapter 4 Transceiver Architectures 17
 Dual Downconversion (Ⅱ)

 After amplification and image-reject filtering, spectrum of C obtained

 Sufficiently linear mixer translates desired channel and adjacent interferers to
first IF (Point D)

 Partial channel selection BPF3 permits the use of a second mixer with
reasonable linearity. (Point E)
 Spectrum is translated to second IF. (Point F)

Chapter 4 Transceiver Architectures 18

 Receiver Architectures

 BPF4 suppresses the interferers to acceptably low levels (Point G)

 An optimum design scales both the noise figure and the IP3 of each stage
according to the total gain preceding that stage.

Chapter 4 Transceiver Architectures 19

 Another Example of Image

Assuming low-side injection for both downconversion mixers in figure above,

determine the image frequencies.

Solution:
As shown below, the first image lies at 2ωLO1 -ωin. The second image is located at 2ωLO2 -
(ωin - ωLO1).

Chapter 4 Transceiver Architectures 20

 Zero Second IF

 To avoid secondary image, most modern heterodyne receivers employ a zero

second IF.
 In this case, the image is the signal itself. No interferer at other frequencies
can be downconverted as an image to a zero center frequency if ωLO2=ωIF1

Chapter 4 Transceiver Architectures 21

 Example of Zero Second IF

Suppose the desired signal in figure above is accompanied by an interferer in the

adjacent channel. Plot the spectrum at the second IF if ωLO2 = ωIF1.

As shown below, the desired channel appears at ± ωIF1 and is accompanied by the
interferer. Upon mixing in the time domain, the spectrum at negative frequencies is
convolved with the LO impulse at +ωLO2, sliding to a zero center frequency for the desired
channel. Similarly, the spectrum at positive frequencies is convolved with the impulse at
-ωLO2 and shifted down to zero. The output thus consists of two copies of the desired
channel surrounded by the interferer spectrum at both positive and negative frequencies.

Chapter 4 Transceiver Architectures 22

 Symmetrically-modulated versus Asymmetrically-
modulated Signal

AM signal generation FM signal generation

 AM signals are symmetric, FM signals are asymmetric.

 Most of today’s modulation schemes, e.g., FSK, QPSK, GMSK, and QAM,
exhibit asymmetric spectra around carrier frequency.

Chapter 4 Transceiver Architectures 23

 Corruption of the Asymmetric Signal Spectrum

 Downconversion to a zero IF superimposes two copies of the signal

 If the signal spectrum is asymmetric, the original signal spectrum will be
corrupted

Chapter 4 Transceiver Architectures 24

 An Example of Self-corruption

Downconversion to what minimum intermediate frequency avoids self-corruption

of asymmetric signals?

Solution:

To avoid self-corruption, the downconverted spectra must not overlap each other. Thus, as
shown in figure below, the signal can be downconverted to an IF equal to half of the signal
bandwidth. Of course, an interferer may now become the image.

Chapter 4 Transceiver Architectures 25

 How can downconversion to a zero IF avoid self-
corruption?

Quadrature downconversion

 By creating two versions of the downconverted signal that have a phase

difference of 90。

Chapter 4 Transceiver Architectures 26

 Sliding-IF Receivers

 Modern heterodyne receivers employ only one oscillator

 The second LO frequency is therefore derived from the first by “frequency
division”

Chapter 4 Transceiver Architectures 27

 Sliding-IF Receivers: Divide-by-2 Circuit

 Such divide-by-2 topology can produce quadrature output

 The second LO waveforms at a frequency of fLO1/2

Chapter 4 Transceiver Architectures 28

 Interesting Properties of Sliding-IF Receivers

Fractional bandwidth:

IF

RF input

Chapter 4 Transceiver Architectures 29

 Sliding-IF Receivers with Divide Ratio of 4

 May incorporate greater divide ratios, e.g., 4

 Second LO fin/5, slightly lower, desirable because generation of LO quadrature

phases at lower frequencies incurs smaller mismatches
 Reduces the frequency difference between the image and the signal, difficult to
reject image.

Chapter 4 Transceiver Architectures 30