Vhf-Comm 1994 3

(it) ~~~MUNICATlON5 A Publication for the Radio Aml).
t~ur Worldwide
E:specitlJly Covering VH F, UH F ora Micro waves
V" lume Nn. 26 A lll llnlll • FAliliOfl 3/ 1994
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ISSN 0177-7505
VHF COMMUNICATIONS 3/94
Contents
Harald Hec kner A l Scm GaA~ I'l~'I ' Power Amplifier 130 - 141
IX.:SUG De ve loped u sin~ the 'PUFF CAD
Software Package
Richa rd A Pormeto. Ph.D. Improving Impedance Bandwidth 142 • 150

Kl l'OO of VHPtUIIF Yagls by Decreasing
the Driven Element LID Ratio
Matja z Vidmar A DI Y Receiver for GPS and 151 • 165

S53MV (jJ .oNASSSatellites
(ex YU3 MV. YDMV) Part -)
I1r.Tng . Jochen Jin nann Radio-Astronomical Experiments 166 - 173

Dnt NV in the 7<.km Band
I1ctlcf Burchard Dipl.-Ing. Logarithmic Converte rs and 174 - 190

Measurement of their Characteristics
KM Publications, 5 WareOrchard, Barby, Rugby, CV23 aUF, UK

Telephone: (0) 1788 890365 ; INT: +44 1788890 365; FAX: (0) 1788 891883
129
VHF CO MMUNICATIO NS 3/94
(~, - - - - - - - - -- --'-'-"--""'
'"''-'''= -''=''-='
Harald Fleckner, DeB UG
A 13cm GaAsFET Power

Amplifier Developed using the
'PUFF' CAD Software Package
Trauslsrorlscd power ampttrters for The goul of the project was to develop
the fr equency range between 2,~O() several a mplifiers using the software,
and 2,400 MIIz have fr eque ntl y been build them, and compare the readings
d e scr ibed i n r ecen t ye a rs . with th e sim ulated values. Three
(1)(2 )(3)(4)(5)(11) diffe rent typ es of ampli fier were in-
vo lvcd in this project, with different
The z-stagc power aurpttrlcr in-
performance figures vary ing from 4 to
troduced here supplies un initial out-
12 Watts in the given freque ncy ran ge.
put of 5 Watts at 23 dB am plifleatlon
in the Bem blind . The following article describes th e
selection of sem i-con ductors. the sim-
ulafion/an aly sis of the am plifier circuit
using the CA ll so ftwar e, the buildi ng of
the 5 Wall amp lifier and the read ings
l.
obtain ed.
INTROD UCTI ON
The circuit was developed using the

pun; CA D software package, which 2.
m akes it ama zing ly sim ple to ca lculate SEL ECTING SEMI-
and simulate even relatively compli- CONDUCTORS
cared microwave circuits . Several publi-
ca tions (7) (8) , together with our own
research, have already put the capabil- The transistor s use d in th e amplifier
ity of th e low -cost software use d to the were Mit subishi type, from the 0900
test, so that very positive results were range for UHP power amplifiers. 1b ey
to be expected. were, in actual fact , N-channel Schottky
130
VHF CO Mr'.1UNICATIONS 3/94
=-===""""'-"'' ' ' - - - -- -- - - -- (¥'
_ H U1I'O UT _
fPo ints ~~8 PLOT
S~ith radius 1
t Z .32lh GHz
[]Sl1 -za.za aa 93 .7 ·
x SZ l 2"."7"3<IB 17i.9·
S12 - 35 . 2 8<111 110> ,9·
+= - 33 . 5 " d ll 1Z1.h·
f il n
Fi ~ . l: Screen Dump from the PUFF CAD Pa ckage
(ja A ~power r E T' s. which had already The type 0906 seeme d a suitable high -
been successfully used in the construe- level stage trans istor. It display ed par-
t ion of several circuits (6)(11), and t icular ly hig.h operational thermal st-
which could he obtained at relatively ability beca use of its large ceramal
low cost. Their power spectrum stre - housing and, in contrast to the 0905,
tched from O.6W (the 0904 type) right which was usually running under strain,
up to lOW (the 0907 type) for amplifi- easily supplied 37dHm = 5W at 1dB
cation levels of between Rand 13dB. compression, thus guarantee ing stable
depend ing on type and frequency . operation with permanent output - e.g.
TIle performance Figures targeted hy the for ATV transmitters. The type 0904
deve lopm ent: was a suitable driving transistor, be-
cause it displayed a high level of
amplification (l3 dB) for a compressio n-
Amplifi cation: > 20dB atk > 1 free output amounting to almost 2RdBm
Outpu t: min5W at = 630mW. The Scparameters of the
max IdB compression selected tra nsistors require d for the
Band width: HX) MHz development of {he circuit came from
Z;n = 7-'{>ut = 50n at return loss ? 20dB the Mirsubishi data hank, and appli ed
unde r the following DC conditions:
co uld therefore be attained only with a

MGF0904 : UDS =9 V at ID =0.2 A
z-stage amplifier. MGF0906: UDS = 10 V at ID = 1.1 A
131
(/'0 ---- ------~~~=~~~
VHF COM MUNICATIONS 3194
•
••
••
• -~ IT
- --- r -~- Qb
•
FI~. 2: Frequenc,' pi...... or II Circuit ror the 9cm ba nd
3.
SI\I ULATlON A:\J)
Tbc ef ficiency o f these tr:lIl~i"lon was
ANALYSIS OF A~IPLIFIER
norm ally abou t -ll)';; . so thai 3 OC inpm CIRCUIT CSI:'/C; CAD
power of more than 12 wau s was SCWrWAR E
required in operation. and lhe re..ulting
power loss had to he d issipated through
a heat sink of sufficiently large dimen- "Inc method of functioning and the
sions . opera tion of the PCI-l; CAD software
a rc com prc bcnstv c ty described in
(7)(R)(Q). so here we sha ll mere ly list
and anal y..c the results obtained.
F l ~_':
Board Le yout genera ted
U"inll 'PUFF'
132
VHF CO MMUNICATIONS 3/94
,
I~
0_
,
- .' -
I,,. , ->C "'. .
I
'V_ o _ ,", _
'_
' _ ..loi.__
" ".
,
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I
.~,
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..-f-----.
"
I
I", •. " " " ••
I
- ... _ .:..-
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-,
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- - -
"
0
,
I ,.-v s...
' ' "
~h
"
,~
r'"
. ' "' j
"l
,
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L }-.,
, d o' ,," "
(. LI
I J c ~ C~ R 5 - F ~ , -P A
P '1 13 - 5 ~ u t t
DCSU(j
Fig.4: Circuit of the Belli GaAs F ET Power Amplifier
Fi g.I shows th e screen dum p from stable can easily be indicated. A

purr- with the dra ft layout of the qnadri polc (am plifier) is absolutely st-
circ uit, the assoc iated Smith diag ram . able if it a lways remains stable what-
the par ts and the path s of the scatter ever the adapted load at the input and
parameters over the frequency range outp ut and never sel f-excites.
selected (1.5 to 3.0 (JIIz). The plot
The gain slope obtained (S2l) as a
w indow (top left ) al so shows the size
function of the frequency showed a
and phase of the scatte r param eter s for
marked resemblance to tha t of a
th e selected ope rat ing frequenc y
coupled band filter. This characteristic
(2.321 6 Gl lz) in the order:
was obtained, firstly, through the
input impedance (Sl l ) with rerum lengt hwise layout of the transmission
loss value
lines (ql incs/tline s) for each stage and,
am plificetion (S21)
secondly, through the son coup ling of
fee dback (S12) the two stages.
and output impedance (S22) with
return loss value. With the lamina-disc method on the
other hand, previously used frequently
The sta bility factor of the amplification
hy the author for circuit matching, there
circuit at the operating frequency can
is usually a gain slope like a deep pass
he det erm ined from the calculated scat-
- less reduc tion in amplific ation at low
tcr para meters. The theoretical relation-
frequencies , maximum at the frequency
ships required for this can he found in
to be transformed, and a more or less
(10). Determining the abso lute stability
sharp redaction thereafter. This happens
(K > 1) using this factor has been tried
because the laminae, soldered on cross-
and tested as best for normal HF
wise, act like stubs, which 11:lVe either
ampl ifiers, so that from knowledge of
an inductiv e or a capacitive influenc e.
the scatter parameters the frequency
depending on the frequency and length.
range over which the circuit will be
133
(~ VHF COMMUNICATIONS 3/94
NAME TYPE VALUE STYLE CO M ~IE :-ITS
CI TC 2.5pf Te flonC eramic Tri mmer

C2 TC 2.5pf T eflon.Ceramic Tri mmer
C3 TC :?:.5pf T eflon.Ceramic Tri mmer
C4 TC 2.5pt T eflon.Cera mic Tri mme r
C5 C l Op! Tekelec-Cbip Capacito r
C6 C 4 .7pF ATC .Chip Ca pac itor
<..'7 C 4 .7pF ATC-Chip Ca pacitor
11 r; N-Connedor
12 r; N·Connec tor
L1 11 . Zs= l OO124mm Striplinc Trans-Line
L2 11. 1.5= lOO{.!4mm Strip linc Trans-Line
L3 11. "Zs= lOO124mm Srnplinc Trans-Line
IA TL 7.s= 70/24mm Striplinc Trans-Lin e
TI fo11T 0904 Mitsubishi N-GaAsPET
T2 fo11T 0906 Mirsubi shi N-GaAsFET
ZS 11. Zs'" 22/2.lmm Stripline T rans-l .inc
21 11. Z= 161l 6ml1l Stri pline Trans-Line
7.2 TI. '1..= 25/1 :'imm Strip line T rans-Line
7.3 11. '1.= 16/ 16mm Striplinc Trans-Line
7A TL Z= 2216Jmm Striplinc Trans-Line
Fill..:>: Component List for the Amp lilicr
To male this d earer. Fig.2 shows the Band width (-JdO): -280/+ 120 Mill
sim ulated freq uency response curve in Fig.3 sho ws the layout generated by the
accordance w ith a circuit published in CA D software as 3 print-out from a
(6) for the 9c m hand. with 0004 and la ser printer for Te flon-based material
0905 tran sistors. without OC choking. with a substrate thick ness of O.79m m.
With !i.li~ht mod ifications to the circuit, The subsequent introd uction of a
th is amplifier can also he operated at correction factor 10 generate a precise
13cm without prob lems. as shown by an photogra phic model is thus poss ible.
ankle in (11). thou gh o f course at The revers ed image is pictured. as
considerably Jess than 2OdO amplifi- generated on the exposed board.
ca tion.
T he track s on the longitudina l board
T he read ings shown in Fig. l gave the side arc earth surfaces inserted sub-
followin g output va lues for th e dra ft sequently , which arc throu gh -hole
circuit: plated to the earth surface when the
Re turn loss input; -23dB circ uit is assem bled .
Return lo ss output: -33dB
In the parts list in Fig. f , we can a lso
Amplification at 2,320 MHz: 24.8d B
recognise the d iscrete mod ules required
Feedback: -35dB for the circuit under the description of
K-factor at 2.320 .MHz; 5
134
VHF COMMUNICATlONS 3/94
,~
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!~".
,hch,"~ l a <11 "'"
~
6.5 • 1.5
1\1.. ~ "" 1<61p<w

! 10 . 100. ,O
FiJ;:'s.6a& b: Side view of mech anica l str ucture a nd the Com ponent
Placement and Assembly plan
(Deckcl ;; cover, Ge nha usc ;; housing: KfJhlkorper ;; hcatsink
Nctztettplatlne, scnkrecht wingcbaut ;; PSlJ board, vcr tlcetty
mounted ; wctmcchhge ha use = tinplat e housi ng: mil der plaline
& rolic v('r llite l ;;: soldere d to boa rd a nd roil; "'ul = slo l;
lIohlnlele du rchk ont ak lert ;; hollow river, throu gb-hclc plated ;
=
AL· Ku hlkor per AI heat sink : Kup ferfolle cop per roil =
135
(~, --'-"'--""'==c:.=:=
" lumpe d". These arc capacitors and Grooves were milled in the heat sink so
resistances which life required for the that the drain and gate connections of
circuit 10 operate. In this connection. the transistors could be soldered flush
Fig.a shows the IIF circuit diagram and to the board. as far as possible. For this
Pig .S the parts list. purpose, the Te flon board had recesses
measuring 4.4 x 17 (mm) and 6.4 x 22
(rnm), into which the transistors were
inserted and then screwed to the heat
sink (see Fig.6). There was also a
4.
copper foil between the hoard and the
ASSE MBLING TI lE heat sink (115 x 57 x O.OSlIIlIl), which
AMPLIFIER was later soldered to the tinplate ho-
using. It prov ided a vel)' good earth
con nection between the transistors, the
Th e amplifier c ircu it was built on a
board, the housing and the heat sink.
Tefl on board (cr = 2.31) with dimen -
sions of \ 09 x 54 x 0.79 (mm ) For its Before the board was mounted , the
part, it was screwed to an aluminium earth surfa ces had to be through-hole
co olin g body (110 x 100 x IOm m), plated with 2mm copper (hollo w)
whic h was used for fa ~kn in g and as a rivets. At least 4 rivets per long itud inal
heat sink for the po wer tran sistors and side and earth con nector arc required
volta ge controllers (Fig.6), for this (see Hg.6).
The use of epoxy resin based material T he hoard was fastened to the heat sink
was excluded. since power amplifiers in at 6 points. using M2 screws. T he
this range alread y produce dielectric transistors each required 2 threaded
loss es of 2CYJ, (app . l dB ), i.e. a loss of holes in the basepla te for the source
1W at 5 W ens ruuput . connection, which were best provided,
true to dim ension s. with the help o f a
So. co mpared with the cos ts of the piece o f cardboard which corresponded
trans istors (app. DM 60/Wa u), it would
to the transistor dimensions.
he a fa lse economy.
The dimensions of the tinplate housin g
The Ix.:: power supply system was were I to x 55 x 28 (mm) and before
assembled on an epo xy board, coaled assembly it was provided with the
on both sides (9 1 x 20 x 1.6mm ), which necessary bores (or the feedthrough
wa s vert ica ll y so lde red to the capacitors and recesses (or the N·
Iongnudina l side of the housing (Fig.o) sockets. The housing itself was then
within. Its c ircuit corres ponded to the
soldered toget her. and soldered to the
one published in (6). longitudinal sides of the screwed-on
rigs. 7. 8 and 9 show the screen. layout board. The soldered-on sockets could
and parts list for this powe r supply. T he then be scre wed to the heat sinks on the
component s tire mounted 0 11 the foil front (aces as well.
side, so that the earth surfaces have to The best insertion and commissioning
be through-hole plated . procedure is as follows:
136
VHF COMM UNICATIONS 3/94
~~~"""'''''''''''''-''------------(t'
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en ,t
uc
Fig. 7: PS U Circuit
(Str om vcrsor gung e power supply; Regier cxtern.verbtndung ueber
Dukos lnf :;:; extern al regulator, connection through InF feedthroug h
capacitors: auf der IIF-pla tine = on the flF hoard
13 7
(~ - -- - - - - - -'-'-"-'=""'""""""'=
VH F COMMUNICATIONS 3194
Fi~.8:
. '"
J."..
Layou t a nd Co mpo ne nt
, . 'O w• • ,
.1 .I O ver tay ror the PSU

IUu"-ns = recdthrou gb
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o:B1) -
TYPE VALUE STY I.E COM MENTS

Cl c InF I 'ccdth rou gh C a p;lc itllr
C2 Fe 1(~ 1 ]i T anl/ 16 V E lectrolytic
CJ EC l l\IF T anl/ 16V Electrolytic
C4 EC 101iF Tanl/16 V lqcct rolyt lc
rl EC I,F T anl/16V Elect rolytic
Co EC 2:!1.IF Tanl/ IOV Elect rolytic
c: EC 221JF rant/I OV Electrolytic
C8 EC I,,"F Tant/IOV Fled wty! ic
f9 Ec I,,"F Tant/lOV Elect11\1)1ic
CIO c Il..lnl' S ihat it Clipacill¥
ell c iliOnI' Sihalit Ca ~C il(lf
en c InF Fccdth r\lllgh Cepecuor
CI 3 c InF Fcethhn'lPJ Ca pacilt¥
J)J z 7J>l6 Zener l)i,'de
IJ2 Z Zl.>4.7 Zener Diode
ICI 1.1 1084 10247 I .('W drnp n:~
1C2 781.06 TOQ2 +vc Rcp llah¥
10 10 .7660 DII.8 -ve Regulator
PI P 25k (2k) Pihcr,K'ermc:t Pot ent iom ctcr
P1 P 2.5k (21;) Pihc: rK'c nnel I'otcnnomctcr
RI R 2k (22k II l .2k) Met al film Res, 2.2 x 6.3mm
270 Mctal lilm Ru , 2.2 x 6.3mm
.R2
"J "
R 10k Metal Film Re s, 2,2 x 6.3mm
"4 R O.2 - 0.5 /lW
3· .'i /O.5W
Mctal lilm
Ml'Ial film
Res, 2.2 x 6.3mm
Res , 2.2 x 6.3mm
"5
"6 "
R 100 Metal film Res , 2.2 x 6.3mm
"7 R 100 Met al film Res. 2.2 x 6.3mm
"8 R 300 MctalIllrn Res, 2.2 x 6.3mm
".
TI "NPN 300
DC546D
Metal film
SOT'"
Res, 2.2 x 6.J mm
NP N T ransistor
F tj;!;.9: PS U Com po nent List
138
VHF CO MM UNICATIONS 3/94
"-"-"""""""= -'-"""'-"'-""---- - - - - -- - - - (f':
Assemble and moun t power supply Fig. l O shows the tra nsfer cha racteristic
boa rd of the amplifier.
Ga t e resistances (R6. R7 ) should al-
read y be soldered onto powe r supply At 5 Watts output, the compression
for better mount ing (sec Pig .S)! range begins, i.e. a furt her increase in
A ss emble and wire up the 6 feedthr- po wer lead s to a co nsid er able
ough capacitors ( InF ) and the block- worsening of the inter-modulation inter-
ing c apacitors C3. C5, CIO. CI I val; (l dR comp ression a -33dB in ) .
fasten (insulurionl ) an d conne ct up
vo ltage controller by me an s of f ig. I I shows the power am plific ation at
fee d through capacitors an input 10mW over the frequency
Mo unt and co nnect up resi stanc es range.
(R4 . R5, R8. R9) to and on IIF
board Curve 1\ shows the measured gradient
M o u n! trimmers (C I . C2. C3 , ( 4) arising if the am plifier is tuned to 2,320
MHz.
MOUll! chip capacitors (C5. C6, C7 )
The power supply (UG and D) can Cu rve B shows the grad ient obtai ned
no w be te sted. throngh simulation. in accordance with
M o un! GaAsFET's Fig .l .
The st atic current lev els can now be Con se que ntly, the ampli fier has a hand
set : width of 300 MI [z. Its ampli fication
reduction at the band limits is o f course
somewhat less than in curve n. The
0904 • In =0.21\ ; WOo - lD = l.lA reasons for this arc the losse s conditi-
Note : for continu ous operation in unfa- 0 11:11 on the c ircuit, which can not be
vo ura ble conditions. it is advisable to covered comp letely hy the simulation.

mo unt the amplifier on an addit ional The linear amp lific ation of 2d13 ob-
heat s ink (c.g the housing wall), to taiucd is only slightly di fferent hom the
ensure stable opera tion. calculated value . If the amplifier is
broad -hand tuned. so that its course
corre sponds to curve S , the amp lifi-
cation falls by about l d B (20'70) as the
5. band width increases.
READINGS To sum up, we can say that using PUff
low-cost software to develop simple
integrated high-frequency circu its can
Th e p rototype amplifier was constm- be highly recommended. True. the
cted so that a 5 Watt output coul d be ef fic iency is very much reduce d by
achieve d with an input of 28mW at comparison with high-end products
2.320 MHz. The mea surement was such as, for exam ple, Super-Compact.
carried out using a type HP 432 but the results obtainable are more than
W attm eter and a 30dB attcnua tor from adequate for the amat eur sector.
Narda .
139
VHF COMMU NICATIONS 3/94
(/' - - - -- - -- - ------'-""-'''''-''''''''''''''''-''''''''''''''''
PA13-5W Fi ~ . I O :
o , 0906 9,SV 11,l A - 0904 9V IO,2A Transfer Cheractcrts-

tics of th e Amplifier
=
Tauscnd thousand)
6.
LITERAT URE (4) ~cl c . Co : 7W Tranvietorized Lk lll
Lin ear Am plifier
D ubus-lnfo. no. I, 1984. pr . 3 - 7
( I) Itcidc mann. R: Linear 1 Walt
Amplifier for the l Scm Band (5) H eckner , II. & l lirnmlcr, K.:
VIIF Com mnrnceu ons 4/8 1 pp. 1Scm Pre -Amp lifier and l J cm
204 - 206 (2W) PI\.
Dubus-lnfo. 110 . 2, 1986, pp. 149 ·
(2) Scnkcr.Ll.r.i t xcrnTransceiver 154
Dubus-lnfc. no. 3. gnu . pp. 169 .
170 (6) Kuhn e, Vi .: High-Power ( jaAsmT
Amplificr for vern.
(3) H cckncr, H.: l Scm Powcr Dub us-Into. vel. 20 (199 1). no. 2.
Amplifi er pp. 7 • 16
Dubus-Iufo. no. J. 1QR 2. p. 170
t.eist unqsverstarkunq PA 13·5W

Pin :: 10 mW
zs
V
p ." ---':._;.
'~
za
;
n
d
za
"ec
"te
,'i I ,~ : J Fi~. 1 1 :
Co mpa r bon or
B
"'.0 . u
TAUSEMJ
aa
Freq uenz in MHz
'.' z.s
Mea sured and
Simulated Power
Amplification (Le ist un
~'l " e r!'t a r ku ng)
140
========-- - - - --- - - - - - ,'~
(7) B ertclsmeier, R.: PUFF Design (10) Unger/H arth.High-Prequency

Software Semi-C onductor E lectro nics
Dubus-Info. vo l. 18 (1989), no. 4, Hirzel-Ve rlag , Stuttgart
pp. 30 - 33 ISBN 37776 02353
(8) L entz, R.E.:PUrr - CAD Software ( II) Schmit t, G. : l 3cm Power Amp lifier
fo r 1vIlcrowavc-Striplinc Ci rcuits with G aA~
V HF Communications, 2/9 1, p. 66 Dubus -Info, vo l. 20 (1991), 110. 4,
pp. 55 - 56
(9) Wedge, S.W ., Compton, R. &
Rut ledge, D.:l' UFF Compute r
Aide d Design for Microwav e
,Vote: The PUFF software package is
Int egrated Circuits
available f rom KM Publications. Please
P1.1ff Distribution, Ca lifornia
see our software catalogue on the rear
Ins titute o f Techno logy, Pasadena
cover of this issue.
The VHf Communications

Disc ofthe Quarter
YAGIMAX 3.01
This set of programs covers YAGI design and
performance calculations, allowing you to dimension a
design and then calculate it, theoretical gain,
directivity, bandwidth, etc. Also included arc
programs to calculate the dimensioning of Gamma and
Hairpin Loop matching systems
Supplied on a 5.25" disc (3.5" on request) with all
documentation on the disc.
£10.00 including shipping

KM Publications,S Ware Orchard, Barby, Nr.Rugby,
CV23 8UF. Tel : (0)1788 89ll36S; Fax: (0)1788 891883
141
(~ --=c.=="""'''''''''''-'''''
VHF COMMUNICATIONS 3194
Richard A. Formato. Ph.D., KJPOO
Improving Impedance
Bandwidth of VHF/UHF Yagis
by Decreasing the Driven
Element LID Ratio
The a nte nna lit er at ur e hint s that dipoles. arc some times used, hilt they
tncr caslna the clem en t di a me ter in a lire not considered here. On one side o f
Y ugi Im p r ove s its imp edan ce the DE i-, a longer clement (R) which
bandwidth (sec. for example, III al acts as a re flector. On the other side are
page 11·1 5). Bul lh e au t hor is nol shorter clements (1) 1.. .01\) which act as
a wa re of da ta showing wha t degree flf directors. The reflecto r and directors
improvement can he obtai ned. This are paras itic elements.
te ch noll' describes the eITeet of 1n most Vag i designs all clements are
Incr easi ng driven ele me nt diameter
the sam e diameter, and they arc electri -
and pr esen ts r esults for a typica l
cally thin. Thin clements have LID > I.
th ree-element a r ray . Wh ile the tech - E lements that arc not thin are f at . Th in
niq ue is frequency independent. it is and fat d ements have different cu rrent
cspl'ci a lly useful for a nte n nas From distributi ons. 111e current along a very
mid-VII I" through UII F.
thin eleme nt is nearly sinusoidal, but
t h i s a p p r o x im at i o n b c c o m e s
progressively worse as the elem ent
Fig.1 shows typ ical Y3~i geometry. The
becom es fatt er.
antenna co nsists of parallel elements
spaced along the array axis. The RF An element 's sel f impedance is
SOUTce exci tes the driven clement (DE), determined by its free-space current
which is usually a centre-fed dipole as dim inution , which varies cons iderably
shown (length L, diame ter D). Other with the LID ratio. A Vagi' s input
DE con figurations, such as folded impedance is determi ned by the DE self
142
Array
Axls
Dl DN
- ~ D lo -
R DE
F ig. l : Ya ~i Array Cil·o me l T.v
Fig.2: VSWR vs Norm alised Reactance

143
(f, - - - -- - - - - - -----''-''--''== = = =
imp edance and its mutua l impedance react ance is important, not its sign
with every other element in the array , (inductive or capacitive).
but the DE's influence is dominant. The
It is evident from Fig.2 that VSW R is
des ign o bjec tive is to in crea se
more sensitive to increases in Xn when
bandwidth by adjusting the DE self-
Rn is low. For exam ple, increasing Xn
impedance to imp rove the match to the
from 2.5 to 3 causes the VSWR to go
feed system chara cteristic impedance.
from 15 to 20.5 when Rn=O.5, hilt only
11\1: conject ure that changing the DE' s from 5.6 to 6 .9 when Rn=2. Because of
LID ratio can significantly a lter a their low input resis tance. Yagis tend to
Vag i's input Imped ance rests on the exhibit this sort o f VSWR sensitivity. It
foll owing observa tions : is reasonable to expect that a DE which
increases the Vagi radiation resistance
the input resistance of well -designed
will improve performance by red uci ng
Yogis is usually lower than son, VSWI{ sensitivity to input reactance.
often by quite a bit
T he initial design objective in selecting
in general. VSWR increa ses more :l better DE confi gurat ion is therefore to
qu ick ly with load reactance when m axim ise its rad iation resistance.
the load resistance is less than the TIle self- impedance of a centre-fed. free
feed system cha racteristic impedance space d ipole is planed as a function of
the radia tion resistance o f a centr e- d iameter in rigs. ~ (a) and 3(b). The
fed di pole pa sse s t hro ug h a input resistance appears in f ig..1(3). The
maximum as its I./D ratio decreases d ifferent curves arc for different cle-
ment lengths as ind icated . The dipo le
Lo w inp ut resistance is apparent from d iameter varies from zero (in finite I.ID)
published Vagi design dat a (see, for 10 0,1 (4.5 s If> Lfi L sU> 5.0). Note
example, [11 -[5]) . The other two obscr- that L and D arc in wave lengths . For
vatious arc discussed below. OAS s U> I. <Ib 0 .50 wave. the
P i1!-.2 plots VSWR n the magnitude o f resistance increases unti l the dia me ter
the norma lised 103d reactance . Several is ncar 0 .05 wave, then it decreases.
curves are presented for d ifferent values The maximum resistance for a fat
of normalised load resistance. Xn and di pole is considerably highe r than it is
Rn are calcu lated by d ividin g the load for a very thin one, which is important
reactance and resistance . res pectively. in trying 10 increase the Yegl' s input
by Ihe feed system chara cte ristic impe- resistance.
dance, ZOo which is assumed to be F ig.3( b) p lots the dipo le 's in put
purely resi stive . III most antenna sysr- reactance . A half-wave di pole is induc-
ems Zo =50+jOn. In a 50n system, an tive for very small diame ters, p:H ~ e s
aCUl3 1 I03d resistance of 25 H is a through resonance ncar 0 .05 wave. Ihen
norma lised resistance Rn=0.50 (top becom es capacitive . 111e 0.475 wave
curv e in Fig.:!). A load reactance of 125 dipole shows two resonances, one near
ohms (Xn=2.5) produces a VSWR of a dia meter of 0.003 wave , and the other
15. Note that only thc magnit ude of the ncar 0.043 wave. The shortest antenna
144
VHF CO MMUNICATIONS 3/94
C -F D ipole Inpu~ Resistance

(para~etric in l e n g t h )
118 ....-.-----.---- •.---,..... --···~ - "- ~--- · · l-------.------'· · · · · · ·~- r· ..·· ~ · ~ --- ----r-- - - ~
.aer'tt j,-
-- - - -~ .::>.: .
._.. . . . .-i - ---· .---~'..L ..--xc --- L "'8 . see
.
-- --t- -..;:..- ...
i ''''-, ' '' ' '-''· '-' · 1' '
W<l _ I
-- -I
! ""
:
90 !;/ ::~
,// 1
. , - -, ,
- ~,:e . ~~==, .\ -<'~
+
-
! "".,
j ,i
~
o : l~;;":i:: C ~ _~ "'1
+ , tf"' j ]
L_ _ _.. L..........__..~O:= __ j .._~._.~. __..L-.--..- ...• ~~J
0.82 8 .1'" B .itf. 8.88 ''-18
DiaMeter (w avelengths)
F ig.3a
C- F Dipole Input Reactance

(paraMe~ric in length)
""38 +.
tI··
........... ."-_-- .)( .• J. "8 .SHA
za
I ••
I e
~
0 -t. ...
- aei.
- 38
8 .82 8 .84 e.ee 8. 89 8 . 11'1

DiaMe~er (wavelengths)
Fig.3h
145
(f:' --'-"'--'====e=
(0 ,450 wave) is always capa cit ive , How Increasing the DE dia meter docs not
the rea ctance changes with diam eter is a ffect maxim um gain or FE.
important determining the DE resonant
Input resistance (R), reactance (X ), and
frequency; hill resonat ing the DE is not
VSWR (rel ative to 50 ohms) appe.ar in
a primary objec tive at this po int. fi gs, 4(b) and 5(a), which should be
The e ffect of LID on input impe dance compared directly. The most im port ant
was investigated by mod ellin g a well- differe nces arc the improved antenn a ' s
designed, three-cl ement Vagi with thin higher input resistance (55.9 'I S 22,34n )
and fat DEs. The origin al antenna with and its substantially sma ller VSWR
(he thin DE is referred to as the variation (1.8-5.7 compared ( 0 2.46 -
" prototype" . 1\ co nsisted of a 0.479 10 .7), T he improved array's VSWR is
wave reflector. a 0.451 wave DE, and a much easier to ma tch than the p ro-
0.45 1 wave direct or. Each clement was totype ' s, which should result in better
0.00 5 wave diameter. The three cl e- impedance bandwid th.
me nts were uniforml y spaced 05 wave
Si nce ha th antennas are inductive at the
along (he ::lTTay axis. Th is antenna is
design frequ ency (X= 14.4n9.9n , pro-
described in Pl, T able 5-4.
tm ypc/improvcd array). the simp lest
The modifie d prototype is referr ed to as matching scheme is to add capa ci tive
tile "improved " array. T he o nly rea ctanc e to resonate the antenna at F".
d ifference between the two antcnuax is For c on ven ie nce , it is a ssu me d
the DE diameter, which was incr ease d Fo=299 .S MHz (I met er wave length). If
to 0.04 86 wave (L/D=09.3/90.6, impro- series capaci tors are used, then the lota l
ved array/prototype). Th is diameter was requir ed capaciraucc is 16 .87pF for the
chosen becaus e it max imises the self prototype and 6.34pF for the improved
resistance o f a 0.453 wave dipole arr ay . The effect o f adding serie s
(7 0.23Q). Other diam eters co uld also capa cit anc e is shown in Pigs. 4(c ) and
be used , since the resistance is not 5 ( 1'1 ), whic h sho uld he compared
particularly sensitive to Ch Jll!!CS in directly.
diameter bet ween about 0.04 and 0.055
Not" : The detail s of how reactance is
wav e.
added at the feed point ar c not con sid-
Prototype ant enn a perform ance is ered. /\ capacitor is the sim plest way to
shown in Hg.4 , and the improved array add capac itive reacta nce, but not the
in Pig.S. T he x-axis is the ratio o f only one . Whatever approac h is taken ,
operating frequency to the dcsigu fre- fe ed syste m symme try mus t be
quc ncy, F". pre served in orde r to avoi d unbalancing
the ante nna .
The prototype forward gain and F H
ratio are plotte d in P ig.4(a). Ma ximum The m inim um resistance is similar in
gai n is 9.56dB i at 0 .991 Fo' and both designs, but R increases more
maxi mum l-B is 6.35dD at O. 9 79~0' Th e quickly and reaches higher values in
improved arrey's gain and ~B curv es the improved arra y , '111is effect is
<lTC so cl ose to those in Fig .4(a) tha t actuall y beneficia l beca use of the
they arc 11 0 t reproduc ed. VSWR behaviour discussed in conn ec-
146
:.=-=====-"=----------- (~
Ratio F/Fo
F ig,",,"
3 Elen en~ Vagi. Free - Space
I
E
,I;
C
147
(/',--------------'-'-"-'====~
I
!
.-Q
uou wit h r ig.2. Maxi mum resistan ce in The imp roved antenna 's VS\VR is OCt-
till: improved Vag i is abo ut 2ROn ncar tcr at Po beca use its resistance is close
1.0, Po · to the feed system cha racteristic imped-
ance of 50n. T hus, the large r DE
The series capaci tors bring both am en-
diameter increases the array 's radiation
nus into reso nance (X=O) at Fo=2I)l) .~
resistance as expected. Matchin g the
MHz. TIle prototype' s VSWR is 2.24 at
improved antenna is simply a manor o f
the design frequency. and its minim um
neutra lising its input reactance.
VSWR is 2.16 at 1.007F(\. Th e reason
thc VSWR is not better than 2.24 at Fo There are several ma tching tech niq ues
is that the input res istance is still low not co nsidered here which can improve
com pared to the feed system impedance the VSW R even more. The simplest is
o f son. Compa ring: the prototype ' s 10 adjus t the DE LID ratio so that bot h
VSWR wi th and with out added thc radiat ion resistance is as close as
reacta nce shows Ihat the improvement pos..iblc to son and the array is
is only marginal. resonant at f O'
Fig.5(h) sho ws that the fat DE provides Ma tch ing ne tworks , imp e d a n c e
muc h better performance . The VSWR is matching feeds such 3S a 'l-march. or
on ly slightly above 1:1 at F o. and it is antenna tuners arc some of the other
below 2.5:1 from O.9& t Fo to 1.0l4Foo possible techniques for improving im-
an impedance band width of 3.3% of Fa' pedance bandw idth.
148
VHF COMMUNICATiONS 3194
'-'-"-===="-""''-------------(~
91............... ··~ · ·.··~· -<- !-.--- . - -.- -~-·,· - ~r_r_"'"" ,.~- . ,..,.......................-. 3I'W'J
_ i i ) -- -.
I
E .'· ·f ,, !, , ! ·i "" -- " ,
; ,
2S8
:. 7 _ ..." ...... - .~
C
, ,
~ (" -_ _ -----+ " -'- " -" " -' ~ " - ' ~ 1"-
I
-'" _ -- -:::=:..t= ~_.-
:
''''
~ I
\ 5 ------t- ----..
I ,~ "
-.~:t~ ---~ \, (.__.---.: ",:""
i ----....._
1"" I
:.
\ , . 1. \i C
1 _ . __ _. . ---i-- _ ~_---"' _. . ,." --- sa
~
_... _-- ... - ,;_ ,./_.~,, " " I: ',.', .
3 :3 ._-- -(.:. ....•-.-- -r'-- -t-- - - ..+..;.,- -- - ----~ .

,.. __ / ' l
~
~
"--..
2 , , " .':":: -~""..::..:.:::.;_-.:."-.,...<
"" I
, "',_."._-
···+1···, X (D....;.;)···.
! \
--·········-----······r ., ::.~.', -,- .., "'. - &8
1
a .se
, .~ .....,__ ~ ~~T_'_ ._>_ L. '_ _ "_ ~ _~. A I....___.._~ .....~_L_,:.~_. ~ •.... ,.
...
8 .% 1.8B
..
1.05 1.1"
" 100
Rai;io F ......Fo
Fig.Sa
ll f"~
""
Vagi
19 - ... .
-'" - wi~h Added
! ~'-"' .. " I " " "" ,~ /
G. 64 pC capac 1 -to; ? '
, '-:..:
,
'" " "
Reac~ance
"
see
I
I '1. @
, . F .. ... 299 . a Mh.
I' .. ~ _ . .- :
: "-
' <, 7.tJa
,.
·· t:: -Z·. :. .
aU ... . --- \ : -
, , R
:"
~ ~~. ~~:-~:+s'-~~-;-~ L~~
5 .
-
' _ ....._ ._ , ..., ... _
100
•
I
I
.l
o
:.. -- ;.. ·~<: -t::, ::: --:_J ,,- --.
\ '. ;
~ --- ~
- nm
~
2 ".,,_.. . I,
. "," '
V _ R
.. - - ..' . __ y
.._ •.. •. •. • .... "••
1 ... ,~.,_~ .• ~..A_,..L'--~~. . . . . . .. . . .~ .....A.......~._~.A ..L.. .._

,..,..~.~:::::=: - 286
8 .98 8 .95 1.68 1.85 1.18
Ra-l.io F/Fo
149
(~, --------------'~"""'~"""""""'''''
These methods work best with a Vagi [2J Vagi Antenna Design. James L.
whose VSWR has already been lowered L.1 WSOll. W2PV. American Radio
using the L/D tech nique. The data in Relay League, Newington. c r.
Ibis tech notc provide a starting point 1986.
for further experimentation and illus-
131 Antenna Theory and Design.
trate the degree of improvement attain- Warren G. Stutzman . Gary A,
abl e with a fat driven element.
Thiel e, John Wiley and Sons. New
': crk, 1981.
141 Antenna Theory, Analysis and
Des ign. Constantine A Belan ts.
RE FER ENCES Harper & Row, New York, 1982.
Sect. 9.3
(1) The ARRL Ante nna Book. 16th (5) The ARRL Handbook 1993.
ed ition, Gerald Hall. KITD. editor. Seventieth Edition. American
America n Rad io Rela y League. Rad io Rday League. Newington.
Newington. C T, 1991. c r. Chap. 33
GPS Theory and Practice

lt.Hofm an- w cllcnhot, I1.Licht cncggcr & .l.Cotllns
326 pages detailing all you need to know a bout how the satellite
G loba l Positioning System wor ks. Using GPS for precise
measu rement s, attitude and navigation is discussed in deta il.
£39.95
Shippi ng: UK £2.00; Overseas £3.50; Airm ai l £7.00
K:\-I Publ ications, S Ware Orc ha rd, Barby, Rugby, CV23 SUI"
Te l: (0)1788 890365 Fa x: (0)1788 891883
150
Marjaz Vidmar S53MV (ex Yll 3 lIMV, YT 3 M)
A DIY Receiver for GPS and

GLONASS Satellites
Part-3
3. attitude are unknown in a navigation

T HEORY OF OPERATlOl\ problem, satellite navigation receivers
gene rally IIS C eithe r one or more omni-
O F ( iPS AND G LO NASS
dire ctional antennas. All satel lite navi-
REC EIVF:RS gation sig nals arc circularly polarised
(usually RHe l') to allow the user's
receiver to further atte nuate any re-
s.r. GPS/G LO NASS Receiver
flected wave s, since circu larly polarised
Pr inciples of Op eration
waves change their sense of polarisa-
Since the signals transmitted by GPS tion on each reflection. Refle cted waves
and GLONASS satellites arc similar, are a major nuisance in precision
th e re ceiver design [or any of these navigation system s: they rep resent an
systems follo ws the same guidelines. un predicta ble pr opagat ion anomaly
The pri nciple block diagram of a (IPS which is a major source of measure-
or GLO;.TASS receiver is shown in mcnr errors.
Fig.l l . Only a single chan nel recei ver
The radio signa ls co llected by an -
is sho wn for simpli city. The problem of
omnidirectional receivi ng antenna arc
sim ultaneously receiving more than one
weak. A low-noise ampl ifier will pre -
signa l (like the CIA-signal and both P
vent any further degradatio n of the
signals from four or more satellites)
signal-to-noise ratio, but it can 110t
will be discussed later.
reduce the thermal noise collected by
Since the user's pos ition, velocit y and the antenna nor unwanted naviga tion
151
C/o, -----------'.!:!!:.-""""'""""''''"''''~'''''
"--
-~~
rlg...... n.n"
"''''
Cod.
S400Cl r_.
Cod.
L....:..------'-""'-"""'------1-'----'---J
CPU
SS3MY
Fig:.l1 : P r inciple Block Diagram of it GPS/<i l ,O NASS Receiver
satellite transmissions on the same A GPS or G LO~ ASS receiver will first
frequency. OI'S and GLO NASS satellite dow nconvert the signals 10 a suita ble IF
signals arc widcband, ranging from I an d amp lify the m be fore further
MHz (GI.ONASS CIA-code) to 20 processing. At this stage a wide IF
MHz (UPS p-coa c). lind the satellite filter, corresponding: to the com plete
transmitter power is lim ited 10 around original signal bandwidth, can he used
25dBW EIRP (Ll e lk -c ode for both to improve the dynamic range of the
GPS and ULONASS) Of even less than receiver. T he downc on vcrtcr may be
this (Pctrausnu ssions). making the sig- ma de tunea ble if widely separated
nal usually weaker than the thermal channels arc to he received, like th e
noise co llected by the antenna . (1J.ONI\ SS C/I\ -transmissiom .
Although buried in thermal noise and The wideband IF signal is then multi -
interference. these signals can still be plied by (mixed with) a Ioceny-gencr-
used. since the given bandwidth and ercd sate llite signal replica, mod ulated
megabits-per-second rates apply to a hy thc same code . If the locally
know n code and not 10 the inform ation gene rated code is synchronised to the
ban dwidth. which is smaller than I ltlz sat el lite transmission. the band width of
for hoth ti mi ng and Doppler shift the desired mixing product will collapse
mea surements and the navigation data do wn to almost zero, since two identi-
transmitted at 50hps. In other words, ca l Oli gO-degrees BPSK modu lation
GPS and GLONASS signals are direct- processes exactly cancel each other, on
sequence spread-spectrum signa Is, using: the ot her hand" the bandwidth of all
Cod e-Di vis ion Mult iple Acc es s unwanted signals, like noise or interfer-
(CDMA) techniques [7). cncc. will be further expanded by this
ope ration to a double band width.
152
VHF COMMUNICATiONS 3/94
Since the bandwidth of th e desired

signal collapses, this operation is usu-
all y caIle d signal spectrum desprcading .
The des ired signal can now be filtered-
out with a narrow IF filter having a
ban dwidth ranging from 100 Hz 10 10
kl Iz in a GPS or GLONASS receiver.
After the narrow IF filter, the signal-
to-noise ratio finally achiev es usable
valu es and typically reaches 20d H.
The filtered IF signal is then used for
sev era l purposes. First, it is used (0
acq uire and maintain synchroni sation of
the loc ally generated code. Dithering
the locally-generated code hack and
fort h b y a fraction of the bit period
ge nerat es an amp litude modula tion on
the filt ered signal. The phase o f this
modulation cont a ins the information
required to keep the synchronisation of
the loca l code generator.
The filtered IF signal is also fed to a
BPSK demodulator (usually a squaring
I'LL o r a Costas PLL) to extract the
50bps navigation message data. The
BPSK demodulator also provides a
re generated carrier that is used for
Doppler-shift measurements. On the
other hand, the code -tim ing in formation
is obtained from the local code genera-
tor. A ll three signals, cod e timing ,
Doppler shift and 50hps nav igation data
arc fed to the receiver CPU to compute
th e user position, velocit y, accurat e
time etc.
Fo r Eart h-located" slowly-mov ing us-
ers, the Doppler shift on the satellit e
signals is mainly due to the satellit e
motion and amount s up to +/- 5 kHz on
the LI frequency. In most cases some
fin e tuning will be required to com pen-
sate the Doppler shift in front of the
153
VHF COMMUNICAT ION S 3194
(to: - - - -- - - -- ---''-''--'=====
navi gation data and synchronise the ir 3 .2. DigilllJ Signal Processi ng (DSP)
local Pccode gen erator to the CIA-code In G P S/G L O NASS receivers
transmission first. Since the Pccode rate After the princ iples of opera tion and
is only 10 times the CIA -code rate,
the required funct ions of an electronic
there arc very few possible Pccodc
ci rcuit are know n. one has to deci de
phases left 10 be tested 10 lock on the about the tec hn olo gy to practically
Pctransmission.
implem ent the ci rcuit. III most ca ses
GPS and GLONASS have been de- UPS or (JJ .O NASS recei vers are mobile
sig ned 10 supply liming codes. the user units inst alled on vehicles or eve n
position be ing computed from the port a ble handhel d units. The recei ver
mea sured propa gat ion tim e differences. weight. size and power-con sumption ar c
Add itio nally. the user velo city can be a ll importa nt. Wh ile every <iPS or
computed from the alrea dy known posi- GL ONASS receiver m ust have an an-
lion and the measured Doppler-shift tc nna. a RF front -cud and a d i~ ital
differences on the signal carriers. co mpute r to solve the navi)!alion cq ua-
ttcns. the IP signa l prot'cssillg may
Although the Doppler shift can also be
include just a single chann el in a simple
measured on the cod e rates, this rucas -
CIA-only receiver or more than 10
urcmcnr is usuall y vcry noi sy. On th e
channels in a full-spec Ll & 1.2 It-code
oth er hand , no abs olute delay diffe rence
recei ver.
ca n be me asured tin the ca rrier. since
the carrier phase becomes ambiguous when the same circuit function needs
after 360 degrees. to I:'C duplicated several times. like the
II' proces sing channel s in a radio-
Finally, relating the carrier pha se to the
naviga tion re ceiver, it is usually COIl-
code phas e may prod uce excelle nt re-
vcuicnt to use Digita l Signal Proc essing
sults, hut requires un accura te compcn-
(I) SP) techniq ues. An impo rtant advan-
sauo n of ionospheric efforts, which
rage of nsp over analogue ci rcuits is
have opposite signs : the ionosphere
that d uplicated cha nnels are comp letely
dela ys Ihe modulat ion and al the same
identica l a nd require no tuning or
time advances the carrier phase!
calibrat ion to accura tely meas ure the
Besides the described principle of op- difference in the time of arriv al or
eration of a GPS or CiLO NASS re- Dop pler shift of radio-navi gation sig-
ceiver, there arc some other possibili- nals. A single nsp circuit ca n also he
ties. Por example, the CIA-code sync easily multiplexed am ong severa l sig-
could he obtained muc h fasta using an nals. since the inter nal variables of a
analo gue (SA W) or digit al (rFf) corrc- f)SP circuit like a PL! . veo frequency
lutor. To evaluate Ionospheric errors, or phase can be stored in a compute r
codeless reception techniques can he meOlory and recalled and Updated when
used to receive both Pctrausmissions on needed again.
Ll and L2 frequencies witho ut eve n
Th e bandwidth of the navigation sarel-
knowing the cod es used .
lite signals is several MHl and this is a
rather large figure for nsp. Implement-
154
l<~r>:l """" .
"'n1t M e lR~P)
fnl t !j<altd Oata

141,;t Im~
(""" ", TiJo,,,,"

(haNoi 5 ~ j .( j
CPU
SS3MV
Fig .12 : Principle Bloc k Dia gram or a l -hil DSP G PS/GLONASS Receiver
ing the whole IF signal processing of a GPS or GLONAS S signal is a constant

UPS/G LONASS receiver completely in amp litude signal and limiting is there -
software (like described in the introduc - fore not harmful. Howe ver, after the
tion t o nsp technique s in [liD is wide If filter in the rece iver there is a
difficu lt although it has been done 19] mix of many satellite signals of diffe r-
fo r the GPS CIA-code using powerful ent strength and lots of thermal noise as
m icro c omputers. Most GPS/GLONASS well. If such a mix of signals is limited,
receivers usc a com bination of dedi- the re sulting intcrm odularion distortion
cated DSP hardware and software for lf degrades the signal-to-noise ratio by
signal processing. Dedic ated DSP hard- around 2dB.
ware is only used where the bandwidth
Since navigation satellite signals arc
is large and the functions arc relatively
pseudo-random sequences, all undesired
simple , like the local satellite signal
signals and all inrcrmodulatlon product s
replica generation and the signal de-
only af fect the desired signal in the
spreadin g, while all other functions,
same way as thermal noise. The refo re,
includin g all feedback loops, arc imple-
in a GPSjGLONASS rece iver, very few
mented in software.
hits arc required to represent the wide-
When designing a DSP circuit and in band IF signal. Most GPS/GLONASS
particul ar when designing dedica ted receiv ers simply limit the widcb and IF
DSP hardware it is essential to know , signal, thus accepting the 2dB scnsirlv-
bes ides the signal bandwidth or sam- ity degradation and represe nting each
pling frequency, also the resolution or sample with just two qua ntisation levels
numbe r of bits per sample requi red to or one single bit. Increasing the numb er
represent the signals involved [10]. A of bits per sample only increases the
155
VHF COM MU NICATIO NS 3/94
(~, - - - - - - - - - - --'-"'--'== = '-'==
DSP hardware complexity while bring- formed in softwa re, since an interrupt
ing marg ina l sensitivity improvements, rate of only I kTIL can be accepted by
so that no known receiver des ign uses any mi croproce ssor. The accumula ted
m or e than 3 bits per sample (8 -level data in the integrator has a resolution of
quantisation). 12 to 14 bits. so any further software
processing can he done without any
On the other hand, an I -bit/sample DSP
loss of quantisation accuracy nor
GPS/ULONAS S receiver may have a
proce ssing speed of a general-purpose
really simp le IF signa l processing as
16-bit microprocessor.
shown 011 the prin ciple block diagra m
on F ig.12. The IF signa l is limited, so Dedi ca ted hardwa re is also required for
no AGe is required. Signal samp ling the generation of the local signal rep-
an d A(D convers ion is perform ed by a lica. Ca rriers or rates are conveni ently
sing le D type flip-flop. Signal despread- generated in Nume rically Controlled
ing or mult iplication with the locally oscillators (:--leOs). An 1\CO inc ludes a
generated signal replica is accom- digital adder and an accumulator. In
plished with an exclusive-or gate. Since eve ry d ock cycle , a constant represen t-
the narrow IF can be selecte d clo se to ing the desired output or rate is add ed
zero, the narro w IF bandpass filter may to the accumulato r. If an ana logue
be re placed by a Jowpass filter or an ou tput were desired, the accumulator
integrator. In the case of I -bit samp les, conten t could be fed to a RO M contai n-
the latter is simply a counter with the ing a sine ta ble and then to a D/1\
d ock set to the sampl e rate and gat ed converter, formi ng a direct digita l fre-
by the input signal . quency synthcsiscr.
However. after the narr ow If filtering In a I-hit nsr navigation-receive r the
the resulting signal can no longer be si ne table and Df" converter arc not
repres ented with a sing le bit per sam- required . Si nce the nsr hardware oper-
ple , i f the sample rate of the narrow- ates with l -bit dat a. it is sufficien t to
hand signal is significantly reduced. In take the MS!l o f the NCO accumulator
a CIA-code receiver, the integrator is as the frequency out put Two NCOs arc
read and then reset each millis econd, to required: on for the carrier frequency
match the perio d of either GPS or and another for the code rate. The
GLONASS CIA-codes, since the auto- code-rate NCO supp lies the clock to a
and cros s-correl ation properti es o f these code generator like the ones shown all
codes are only main tained over an Hg.S or 10. The output of the code
integer number of code periods. An ge nerato r i ~ excl usive-or gated with the
integration period of 1 m s corresponds output of the carrier NCO to produce a
to a narrow IF bandwidth o f +1· 500 lIz BPSK-modulated satellite signal rep-
aro und the cen tre frequency. T he latter lica.
is a very good choice for a GPS or
Of co urse both NCOs have to he
GLO NAS S receiver.
accura tely steere d to the required fre-
Any furthe r signal processing after the quency and phase to maintain lock on
integration can be conven iently per- the incoming signal. T he feedback
156
~~=~~~---------- (I:,
funct io n can be performed hy the most comp lex part of a satellite naviga-
m icroprocessor, si nce the feedback tion receiver. Both GPS and GLONASS
speed is vel)' low: a 100 Hz update rate receivers were initially inte nded to have
is usuall y fast enough. Fina lly. the NCO severa l analogue IP processing chan-
frequency can be ea sily steered modify- nels, one per each signal type per
ing the addition constant and the NCO satellite . Since these receivers were
phase can be easily steered modifying intended for military vehicles like
the acc umulator content. In a time- fighter aircraft, tank s or battle ships, the
multiplex ed W cha nnel. both can be price and complexity of several ana -
eas ily stored by the microproce ssor and logue IF processing channels wa s al-
recall e d when th e cha nnel ha rd ware is most unimportant.
switched hack to the same satellite
Early civili an ( ; PS receivers also used
signal.
analogue If proce ssing, although ini-
Prom the tec hnology point of view, a tially limit ed to the C/I\.-code and one
DSP I F channel can he built on an or tw o time -multiplexed IF channel s.
"Euroc ard" size printed c ircuit hoard Time-multiplexing is d ifficult w ith ana-
using just bare 74TICxxx logic. I\. single logue IF channels, since the latter have
IP channel may also be programmed in 10 reacquire lock each time the sate l-
a programmahie-logic int egrated circuit. lites arc changed. Lock Acquisition
f ina lly , the comple te If signa l process - may take 15 to 20 seconds, so tha t the
ing with 6 or S indep e ndent ch an nels me asureme nt loop through four or more
may be integrated ill a single custom satellites takes severa l minu tes . These
inte grat ed circuit. Commercia l satell ite receivers were only suitab le for sta tion-
navigation receivers usc custom inte- ary or slowly-moving users.
grated circuits essentially to prevent
The introduction of Dxl' technique s and
una ut ho rised duplication. On the other
inexpensive computers allo wed much
hand, hare 74HCxxx logic is preferred
faster multiplexing. Since the variables
for an amateur, home-made rece iver.
of a DSP circuit call be stored and
IIopefu lly program ma ble-logic Ies will
recalled, a nsp IF channel docs not
some da y become standa rdis ed and the
need 10 reacqu ire lock each time it is
necessa ry programming tool s cheap
switched to anothe r satellite signal. A
cno ugh to allow amate ur applications.
DSP IF channe l is typically switched
among satellite sigua ls around a hun-
3.3. Multi-channel reception of dred times per second makin g the
naviga tion signals
whole loop among all required signals a
few ten times per second. I Icwcvcr,
A sate llite navigation receiver should because of the avail able signal-t o-noise
be able to rece ive the signals from four rati o, the navigation solut ion in a
or more satellites at the same tim e, to CIA- code receiver only needs to be
be able to measure time and Doppler computed about once per seco nd.
differences. When the GPS specifica-
AH current commercial GPS and GLO-
tions were published back in 1975 [4] ,
NASS receivers lise DSP IF process ing .
the digi tal computer was t he largest and
157
C/'· - - - - - - - -- - ----'-"'-== = "'-"= =
Sma ll handheld C/A-code receive rs expect that com bined GPS/GLONASS
have one, two or three time-multiplexed receivers will become stand ard.
IF c hannels. Mobile C/A-codc receivers
In this article I am going to descr ibe a
hav e 5. 6 or eve n 8 independent
singte-channel C/A-only recei ver usi ng
cha nnels so tha t no multiple xing is
fast time mu ltiplexing . Th is receiver
required . TIme multiple xing males the
ca n be built in two versio ns: GPS or
carrie r lock and Doppler measurements
GLO:-JASS. Although hoth versions use
di fficult and unrel iable. so it is unde-
the same modules as much as possible,
sired in mobile receivers.
this is not a co mbined GPSJ{jLONAS S
Un fo rtu natel y. multi-cha nnel 01.0- receive r yet. The main limitation o f a
NASS rece ive..-rs require a wider raw single IF channel. tirnc -mulriplc xcd re-
sig na l IF and a milch higher sa mpling ccivcr is that the m aximum number of
rate due 10 the wide FD:\1A channel sim ultan eo usly tracked satellites is lim-
spaci ng. On the other hand. UPS rccciv - ited to four or five. so that a com bined
C!S require the saute raw IF ba ndw idth GPS/GLO:"JASS receiver docs not m ake
reg ardle ss of the number o f cha nnels much sense.
thanks to C IJMA. The higher sampling
rates required for n I.O~ A S S ace a little
im pra ct ical with curre ntly avail able in- 3.4. Praclica l (j PS r ecei ver design
teg rated circuit s. Maybe this is another Th e bloc k d iagram of the described
reason why (J I'S rece ivers are more (i PS receiver is shown on Fig..!3. In the
po pular and ( jI.O NASS is almost un- micro wave freq uency range, at Lcband ,
kno wn. Since faster Ie s will ce rtainty the an tenna needs a direc t v isibility o f
be available in t he future. one can the satellites. Therefore it has to be
,. 1,
t llA, 1.S'~
ffl ~ _
GHJ:
B!nr ;I. ,tft>
102" " 1
~ foo ~
'"'''',, n6 ~H I
-.-,, 1
4D-B-8 );3""'1 ' 14""1
V"" ,. IIn<Mr ·
~ . tt .
S·SFX 89
6139 kf!l' Mer

~;~;.. f0- _.. _.f)-=~
l .lnllll !lFX! 9
S53MV
Fi~. 13 : ( i PS Receiver Block Diagr am

158
==== = =='---- - - - -- - -- - ';;.-
-
installed outdoor, 011 the vehi cle roo f or the temperature range from 0 10 30
,
on top o f a portable receive r. Due to its degrees C. as encountered during nor-
ex cellent performance, a half-tum quad - mal receiver ope ration, the TCXO was
rifila r helix is used as a circu larly replaced by a much less expensive
polarised, hemi sphe rica l-coverage an- con ven tional crysta l osc illator in all of
tenna, the prototype s built.
The L NA is install ed directly under the Sampling the 10 Mill. wide IP signa l
antenna. Using two ine xpensive GaAs - with 6139 kH7. produces a th ird down -
~ETs it achiev es 30dB of gain ma king conversion \ 0 a 230 3 kl lz nomina l
any following (reasonable) cab le loss centre frequency. TIle Inter is the final
a lmost unimpo rtant. carrier frequency that needs to he
rege nerated in the dedica ted DSr hard -
'111C Gl'S receiv er incl udes a fixed -
wa re . The dedicat ed nsp hard ware i.s
tu ned downcon vertcr to a suitable IF,
dcsigucd as a mic roproc essor peri pheral
a n IF amp lifier and limiter, a ded icated
with read and writ e registers and is
nSf' ha rdware. a MC68010 based mi-
interrupti ng the MC6RO[O C PO once
crocomputcr with a sma ll keyboa rd and
every millisecond to ma tch the UJ'S
a LCD display and a single master
CIA-code period .
crys tal oscillator for all frequency con -
ve rsions and s':lln p l i ll ~ rate s. T he dow n - In th e portable, stand-alone (fI'S re-
co nve rsion from the C PS 1,1 frequenc y ce iver. the operating soft ware is stored
( 1575 .42 MHz) is made in two steps for in a com pressed form in a 32l:hYlc
co nve n ient image filteri ng. '111C first EPROM . After powe r-oil reset. the
wide IF is in the 102 MHz range and software is decompres sed ill 12RkhYlcs
the second wide IF is ill the 10 MHz o r battery -bac ked CM OS RAM , whic h
ran~e. The wide IF bandwidth is set to is also use d to store the sys tem almanac
around 2 M fJ/.. The actual va lue of the and other data to speed-up the acquisi-
wi de IF bandwidth is not critical, since ti on o f four va lid sate llites. For the
filtering is only required to prevent same reason the CPU also has tlCCCSS to
spec tru m aliasing ill the signal samp ling a sma ll battery-backed real-time clock
circuit. chip.
A freq uency of 6139 k il l. was selected A smal l 8-key key hoard is used to
as ma ster cry stal oscillato r frequency o f select the va rious menus o r the opcrat-
the de scribed riPS rece iver. since the lng so ftware and manuall y set some
best TeXOs arc usually avai lab le for receiver param eters if so desired. T he
the frequency range betwee n 5 MHz portable version of the (iPS receiver is
and 10 MIT/.. using a I .eD mod ule with integrated
driving elect ronics and two rows or 40
T he output of Ihe 6139 kl lz master
alp hanum eric (ASCII ) ch aracters eac h.
oscillator is used both as the samp ling
to display thc receiv er status . the al ma-
freq ue ncy for the I}-, AID conve rsion
nac data or the rcsuhs of the navigat ion
an d as an input to a cha in of multiplier
stages to supply a ll of the frequencies
computations.
required in the do wnconvcrrcr. Limiting
159
(~, - VHF COMMU NICATIONS 3/94
- - - - - - ------'""--''''''"=== '-''=
3.5 . Practical GLONASS rece iver fixed. . n this case the only contribution
design to group-delay variation s across the
The block diagram of the described GLONASS Ll frequency range arc the
tuned circuits at 1.6 G Uz. Group-del ay
G LONASS receiver is shown in Fig.l4.
The G LONASS receiver uses the same
variations introduce errors in the mcas-
type o f antenna and LNA and the same ured time difference... so they immedi-
dedicated DSP hardware and micro- ately affect the accuracy of a naviga-
compute r as its G PS co unterpart. TIle tion receiver. This problem does nor
main di fferen ce bet ween the two re- exist in a GPS receiver. since all GPS
ceivers is in the dow ncouverter. The satelljtos transmit on the same carrier
GLONASS receiver includes a tuneable frequency and any signal flltcn ng pro-
downconvcrter, otherwise the wide duces the same group delay on all
H ) MI\ cha n nel spacing would require satellite signals that exactly cancels-out
when com puting the differen ces.
Impractically high sampling rates in the
dedicated DSP hardware. Both wide . Ps are fixed tuned at II R.7
The downconversicn from the nLO-
Mllz and 10.7 Ml T/, respectively. To
avo id any gm up-dclay v aria tio n ~ in the
NASS Ll frequency range (1({)1 to
wide , FIi. the frequency symh csiscr
1615.5 MHz) is made in two steps for
steps must accurately match the channel
convenient image filterin g. To reduce
spacing so that all signals are co nverted
group-de lay va riations, the first conver-
to the same , F values. Finally. the , F
sion is made tunea ble and the second is
limite r sho uld no t introd uce a variable
.""..
,,. ,,,
l~ .. t-.'
~""
.,. .,
1 ,1F -~ .
"r.;;,
! w_
'"''
cse-
~, -
1601,"'15 "K> 111.1 "'"
11'1lt II","" ~t':H, 5-11"..1. ''''
~,
~_ .
,,
"'" ~ I "U.91 ~
""
F i~. 14: G LONASS Receiver Block Diagr a m

160
del ay as the input signal strength is Th e described GLONASS rece ive r is
changed when switching amo ng chan- using a master crystal oscilla tor at
riels. The second wide IF signal at 10.7 18.000 MH/.. This frequency is multi-
MI ll. is sampled with 4 500 kHz produc - plied by 6 to obtain the 108 MHz signa l
ing a third downcon verslon to a nomi- required for the second conversion and
nal centre frequency o f 1687.5 kllz, by 81 10 obtain the 1458 MHz signa l
required for the PLI . feedback-loop
T here are several d ifficult-to-meet re-
convers ion, The master osci llator fre-
quireme nts for the freq uency synthe-
quency is divided by 4 to o btain the
siscr supplying the signet for tile first
4500 KHz sampling frequency and by
convers ion. This synt hcslscr has to
32 to ohtai n the 562.5 kHz PLI.
provide a clean signal in the frequency
reference frequency. Lik e in the (i PS
range from 1483 to 1497 MHz in steps
receiver, in place o f an ex pensive
o f 562.5 k Hz. Its phase noise should he
TCXO conventional crystal oscillators
low enough to allow carrier lock and
were used in all of the prototypes built,
50b ps nav igatio n data demodu latio n: its
lim ithig somewhat the operating tem-
spectral Iincw idth should he abo ut to
perature range.
times JI3lTOwer than required ill a voice
SSB receiver . Fina lly, ill a time -multi- In the describe d GI.O NASS recei ver,
plexed, sin gle -chann el rece iver the syn- the microcomputer has o ne function
theslscr should he able 10 switch and more . Besides controlling the dedicated
settle to another frequency ill less than Dsp hardware, keyhoard and LCD
I ms the CiT.ONi\SS CIA-code per iod, display, all identical to the UPS court-
to avoid increasing the switching: dead terparts. the mic rocomputer has to set
li me. the frequency synrhcsiscr when switch-
ing among chan nels. The ope rating
Th e freq uency synrhesiser is a PI J .
software is very sim ilar to that ill tbc
with a frequency convener in the
(iPS receiver and has the same hard -
feedbac k loop, 10 decrement the d ivider
wa re re quire ment s: 3 2 khy les o f
modulo, increase the loop gain, speed-
EPRO M, 128kbytes of battery- backed
up the settling and improve tbe output
CMOS RAM and a batte ry-backed
phase noise performanc e. Th e feedback
real-tim e clock.
.signal is downconvertcd to the fre-
quency range 25 10 38 M IIz, so that a
ve ry lo w programma ble loop-divider
3.6. (' I' S/(, I.ONASS dedi cat ed nsp
modu lo betwee n 45 and 69 is required.
ha rdware design
The co mparison freq uency is sci to
562.5 kHz. Althoug h the theo ry o f ope ratio n o f an
I -bit USP (I PS or GLONASS receiver
A well -designed PLI. will settle in 100
ha s already been discusse d, the practi-
to 200 cloc k peri ods of the comparison
cal imp lementation still offers ma ny
frequency and the described PLL
different choices and some additional
achieves this performance with a set -
problems to be solved. For example,
tling time between 200 and 300 mic ro-
from the theoretical po int-of-view it is
seconds .
uni mportant whether the code lock or
161
(~ - - - - -- - - - ---'-'-"-'== = "-'==
the ca rrier lock is achieved first. In In practice, two separate signal-d-
practice . the code lock should be cspread ing mixers arc required when
ach ieved first and shou ld be completely downconvcrting 10 a narro w IF of
independ ent from the ca rrier lock, both al most zero. The mixers arc dri ven with
to spee d -up the initia l signal acqulslrlon the same satellite signal replica, modu-
and to avoid loosi ng lock at short signal Iatcd with the same code, but with the
dropouts (obstructions, fading) or rc- carriers in quadrature . In th is way no
cciver frequency refer ence instabilit ies. information is lost aft er signal de-
spreading, downconversion and integra-
Th e block diagram of the practicall y
tion. The code lock can he made
implemented G PS/GLONASS dedicated
com pletely independent from the carrier
DSP hardware is shown on fi ~ . 1 5 .
lock, since the narrow If signal ampli-
Allhotlg.h the imple mented hardw are is
tude-can he com puted out of the J and
intended for a single channel, time
Q integration sums withou t knowing the
mult iple xed operation. it dirk rs siguifi-
carrier phase. The same 1 and Q
cann y from the theoretical block dia -
integration sums arc used in a different
gra m shown on Fig.12. The mai n
way to achieve carri er lock and extrac t
d iffe rence is that there arc four signa l-
th e Subps navi gation data . Due to the
dcsprcadin g mixe rs (multipliers. ex-or
low sample rate (1 1.:1Lt,) the biter are
ga tes) and four integ rators (count er s)
conveniently performed in software.
for one single channel.
101+\1 G'S r- 1e.t AbtQI!-Oc!.I . "

Dcll er1lTrrig.tl KoOo 1M lnt'9"O!f(ll"er1
f-S; rlII e-,
lJ,1M1'fz
GtONIISS
•
'"
0
I-EIl' ly -v
f\ -- -IH< I-Early
20M.,
I
~
6139 kH',..,ii>S
Tg kl i>1l9 1~Sll Dki1t
~ ::::{)---t ~. o.·[tlrt y
Z(I/II II
I ..
" ''J.»icH~!UWo.ss H If"Iy ~
I ,-,
lI>IlIJ1lt....
~ ::::{)---t.. l - l gl,
1·L:d. Zli/I t...
n~+:
- W911+_
f l< --jj}
=D---t'- Q"L~'. Zd~l ... I
• l.SOollIiUlI o.-lCl!•
Clock
~" ~ '''. T." r-

[ Mhln
rriigtrl Kodt
"J-L
Hog,"".. . IOoj
AdrM'_
0 llU IO
IllMV
CPU
~tt'"4'l
St ! -
~tr104j
Ht°'ld
~ IIItl1t
('U 8l,ls
.....'
F i~ ,t5 : G PS/G LO NASS dedicaled OSP Hardwa re Block Diagr am
162
VH F COMMUNICATIONS 3/94
Although code lock may be maintained

by dithering the locally generated sig-
nal replica, two separate narrow IFs for
an "early" and a " late" local signal
replica provide a 3dB imp rovement in
the signa l-to -noise ratio on time-delay
measurements. The former solution,
code dithering, is usually used in
receivers with an analo gue narrow IF,
since it is difficult to build two identi-
ca l circuits in analog ue technology. The
latter solution is used in receivers with
a nsp narrow IF, since nsp circuits
perform the sum c nume rical ope rations
and arc therefore mathema tica lly identi-
ca l.
To achieve the 3dB signal-to-noise
improvement, two separate sets of I and
Q signal-processing cha ins for the
nearly" and "l ate" signal replicas need
to he used . This brings the total number
of signal-desprcading mixers and inte -
grators to four. Of course the local
signal replica genera tion includes the
generation of four d ifferent signals:
I·E ARLY, Q-EARLY, I-LATE and
Q-LAlTI. All these signals can he
obtained from a single carrier and code
generator, since they arc merely de -
layed versions of the same signal: either
the carrier or the code or both are
delayed . In nsp, dcluys can he easily
obtained with shift registers.
On the other hand , the loc al satell ite
signal replica gen eration can be simpli-
fied with a look-up table. Since the
integra tion period is I ms and the input
sample rate is 6139 kHz (GPS) or 4500
kHz (GLONASS), there are on ly 6139
or 4500 different hits to he stored in the
look-up table for each dcspreading
mixer and integrator. The look-up table
VH F COMMUNICATIONS 3/94
sampli ng rate or any odd multiple of mi llisecond) the microco mputer reads
this value: 1536 kHz for GPS or all four integrate d sum s. From the I and
1125 kHz for GLONASS. Q components it computes the early
and late magnitude s used to search and
In pract ice 613 9 kHz was selected as
maintain code lock . The code phase
the sampling rate for the GPS rece iver
required to maintain lock is at the same
to av oid interferenc e with the GPS
time the result of a time-delay me asure-
CIA -code rate (1023 kIlz), since the
ment, referenced to the rece iver clock.
described look-up table generator main-
T he difference o f two such measure-
tains a fixed phase relationship betwee n
the code transitions and sampling rate. ments is a parameter of a navigation
Considering the various conversion fre- eq uation.
quencies obtained from the same O n the other hand. the T average li nd Q
source, a n IF of 23m kl Iz resulted after average are supplied to a Costas-loop
signal sampling. demodu lator to recover the carrier and
de modulate the .) O hp ~ nav igation data
In the GLON I\SS recei ver. any intcrfer-
hils. Then the subframe or line sync is
encc betwee n the sampli ng rate and
detected 10 fonn nt the data stream and
cod e rate are unimportan t since all
c heck the parity bits before the naviga-
satellit es use the same C/A -<:oue . The
t ion data is used in the computations.
sampling rate of 4500 kl lz was chosen
for convenience. Considering the opera-
tion of the frequency syn thcsiscr. the
final wide IF value could he chosen in
562.5 kHz steps. The value o f 1687.5 10.
k Hz was selected 10 avo id some spuri- LIT ERATURE
ous frequencies generated in the synthc-
siscr.
Finally. the described dedicated DSP il /1 literature refcrences in this article
hardw are alw ays requires the support of are 10 he found on IXl?,f'- 77 of issue
a microcomputer. TIle latter should 2/94
compute and load the look-up tables
first. After each interrupt request (every
(To he cont inued)
Very low noise aort al amplifier for th e

I. -band as per the YT3MV articl e on pag
90 o f VHF Comm unications 2/9 2.
Ki t complete with housing An No. 6358
DM 69. Orders 10 KM Publications at the
address shown on the inside cover, or to
UK w -Bcricme d irect.
164
VHF COMMUNICATIO NS 3194
IThe Parabolic 24cm Preamplifierl

A fully weather-proofed very high·quality preamplifier
covering 1200 MHz to 1360 MHz. Mounted in a sealed
diecast enclo sure with weatherproof N-type sockets for
i np ut and output. DC powered via the output socket for
remote mast-head mounting.
GAIN >40d B across the band

NOISE FIGURE <1.6dB
£120 + £5 post and packing
KM Publications, 5 Ware Orchard, Barby, Nr.Rugby,

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Tel: 0788 890 365 ; Int : +44788890365
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AL L l\lA.JO R C RF:OIT CARns ACCEPTE I)
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The foremos t association in the world. for anyone anywhere in thc world, who is
interested ill Amateur Tele vision.
CQ-TV the quarterly jOI1OlaJ of the BATC is recogn ised as the most
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Jo in the nATC and receive r OUR co py of CQ -T V
Membership is ollfy £9.00 per year . Send your Sterling cheque or credit card
details (non-Ux only) to;
BATC, G renehurst , Pinewood Road . High w ycombe. II P12 4DO. UK
165
(j.- ---- ----------'-"'--""""""""' ''''-'''~=
Dr. lng. Jochen Jirmann, DB1NV
Radio-Astronomical
Experiments in the
70cm Band
At t he 1990 VIII·'· tJH F Congress, amateur ha s a fully mobile 3m mirror,

Hermann Ha gn • DKS CL • presented the obvious questi on was whether you
the Iirst result s obtained from his cou ldn't abo work with simple r Yagi
amateu r radio telescope using a 3m aerials. With this in view, the first
mirror. The following article demon- mailer to he cla ri fied is the optim al
strates how, by using a diITcrcnl observation frequency .
signal processin g technique, you In the pr esent state o f receiver
yourself can detect cosmic radio technology, extreme ly low noise factors
emissions using a single 19-elemenl can be easily attained, even in the
Vagi. gigal fcrtz range, so that no d ue can be
derived from this. In the end, the
the rma l noise from the rece iver instal-
lation is caused by the "black body
I. radiation" which all wann bodies tran-
SELECTING THE OBSERVA- smit, and the spectrum distribution of
TION FREQUE NCY which is described by Planck' s law of
radiation.
In the high -frequency and microwave
The stimulus to getting involved in ranges, we describe the noise properties
radio-astronomical experiments came of an amplifier in tenns of the noise
from DK8CL's paper at Vnp-UIW 90 temperature. The noise outp ut of an
(1), which investigate d cosmic radio ohmic resistance is described using the
emissions in the fre quency range known equation:
around 1.72 GIIz . Since not every
Pr = kToH
166
VH F CO MM UNICATIONS 3/94
I Thermal radiation generntioo

r 100 1 /
.~
.~
] 10
Nm -Thermll1
'.~"•
ndiation geoeeucc
/
~ 081 NV
10 1OQOOJ
Fi~.I : Ibdiulion Pr operti es or ASl ro nomi ca l Objects in th e Microwave Ran ge

where described mathemat ically will find
further inform at ion in (2) and ( 1). Mo..t
L: = 1.38· I0 11 Ws!K Boltzmann
radio-astronomical so urces al-,o gcner-
constant
ale radia tion through non -thermal proc-
To = Ahsn] llh: temperature in deg rees esse s, such as synchrotron radiation
Kelvin from e lectrons moved in the ma gnetic
B= Si1!lI11J bandwidth in Hert z field. No n-thermal radiation is cha ra-
ctcriscd by a power density which
Thi s is also known as the John son decreases as the frequency increases , ill
appmxiutution. Here the noise output is accorda nce with (4). Fig.1 from (4)
irul cpc udcnt of the frequency and is gives a milch simplified picture of the
conditioned only by the te mperature spectrum d istributio n o f thermal lind
and the hand width. '111e no ise tempera - non-thermal radiation sou rces.
tu re of all amplifier is the tem perature
of a moving loa d at the input. ill which Apart from the Sun. the most po wer ful
the amplifier noise is equa l 10 the radio sources arc mainly (If non-therma l
resistance noise. Even II few astronomi- origin. So it seems sensible to choo...e a
cal objects, such as the Sun and the low observation frequency for our first
Moon. em it predominantly thermal ra. experiments. 111e lower limit will he
dia tion, co rrespondi ng to their surface determined by the d ime nsions of the
temperature . Depe nd ing on the optica l aerial and the level of interference from
density of the object, we receiv e noise the atmosphere. domestic app liances
output densities which are either const- and industry, which increases belo w 1
ant or rising with the frequency. G Hz. Even professiona ls sometimes ac-
ci denta lly incl ude home-made in-
A nyone wanting to know more ahout terference signals in the ir measure-
thermal radiation and how it call he
167
(¥, ---'''"-'===c=:=_''O
,..
~,--~
P(· I , I .~ r ato'
OB 1 ~IV
Fig.2: A Radio-Astronomical Direct Receiver
meats, and many "pulsars" have turned

out to have their origins in an electric
The simplest radio-astronomical re-
fence in a nearby pasture.
ceiver, which is also the type used in
So the author decid ed to carry out his (1), is shown in outline in Fig.Z. After
experiments in the 70t:1ll band. This multiple amplification and frequency
frequency is not far from a standard conversion, the inpu t signal reaches a
radio-astronomical observation band rectifier which demodulates the noise
(406 - 410 MIT/.). signal. The output voltage contains a
large fraction stemming from the
residual noise of the receiver instal-
lation and a small , variable fraction
from the radio source in space. So we
2.
subtract an adjustable DC voltage,
RECEIVER TECHNOLOGY which corr esponds to the rece iver noise
r-r-
IIF Amp
t-
M;,,,-
to
TFAml,Hfi..
..'" 0
"
Ai'1 · 0e",Cil
.* I-
-
,-
V.
c- ~,
"'
"\ ~:.- - - ---- -- -- ~
.0<>
==\-
--- - - - - - - -R
)
OCAmp
0
DB1 NV 'r M_ -'
Fig.3: A Radio-Astronomical Receiver as per the Compensation Principle

(Dickie Receiver)
168
, , "
,
, I I
6mllG2141U
O\<illo ~ [AJ
- - "'-r,Il1flt< ~"" Anolr-
i
t>
G", %.18
t> t>
e. s."IHz r~ Rf VIOEO
2'"
-
DB1 NV
I'limo !twildt.
SquuoW... c....".."..
h5 00Hz
0
or-enu-
vollrllet t r
Fig..a: The Author's Dickie Receiver
and greatly increases the difference. An input of the receiver is mounted a

RC modu le with a long time const ant in switch, which periodically connects the
the seconds range provides information receiver with the aer ial or with a
on the stat ic osci llations of the noise terminating load, At the receiver output
level, and the smoothed voltage con- is a second. synchronously operating
trols the display instrument or the switch, which contin uously switches the
recorder. inverted output voltage to the output-
'111e disadvantages of this layout are side low pass filter when the receiver is
obvious. If the noise reading of the connected to the terminating load.
receiver or its amplification oscillates Thus the receiver noise is periodically
to only a minimal extent, then this subtracted from the total signal. As can
immediately shows thro ugh in the OU! · easily be comprehended, a (slow)
put as zero poi nt dr ift. change in the receiver noise factor has
Since these problems were actually essentia lly no effect 0 11 the measure-
much more serious in the valve era, the ment, and an amplificati on drift in-
radio-astronomer Robert Dicke. of the fluences only the size of the reading,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, not the zero point.
developed a solution in 1946. which is A professional Dicke receiver ca n still
still called a "Dick e receiver" today, detect signals which are 30dB below
Pig.3 she.....s the outline layout. At the the noise!
169
(/" VHF COM MU NICATIONS 3/94
3. mod e enab les interference signals to be

A SIMPLE DICKE located rapidly. Th e second part of the
Dicke switch is connected (0 the video
REC EIVER
output of the anal yser and powers the
d is pl ay inst ru ment, an an a log ue
mill ivolt met er. Th e switch cycle
Fig.4 show s the author's 70cm band
originates from a square-wave genera-
experimental rig: a single t o-clement
tor, c.g . a function generator.
Yag i (!) with apr. 15dn gain powen
the Dicke switch through 6m of RG214/ As can he seen, the rece iver uses
U. Natu rally , it would have been more standar d technol ogy for the most part.
advantageous to mount the switch and So it's only the unusual Dicke switch
the pre -amplifier directl y a ll the aerial assemblies which require closer exam -
and not in the att ic, and thu s elim inate ination .
the L5dB cable damping, hut in the
Hg.S shows the high-frequency switch,
development phase it's more important
which consi sts o f tw o PI~ diodes (type
to have an accessi ble installation 10-
DA 379 or BA479), which arc cont rol -
ca tion.
led alte rnatel y by a zero -symm etrical
The pre -amplifier is a five-stage former AC voltage o f about 10 v « . The dio de
channel ampli fier for television hand which is blocked at any time certainl y
IV, which was balanc ed at 435 MHz. sees only 0.7 V "blocking vo ltage" -
Its first stage had been equi pped with a namely the fl ow vo ltage o f the cond uc t-
CF300 10 hr ing the noi se factor down 10 ing diode. But no interference <Irises
values bel ow l d lt . T he Ph ilips through capa citive inductive di stur -
amplifier use d, wi th hi gh -quality, banco.
cle anly dimensioned , silver-p lated shell
It is important that the downstream
circuits , was most suitable for this
pre-amp lifier has a high pass filter at
app licati on.
the input, since otherwise harmonics
It is important here that the pre:- from the switching frequency modulat e
amplifier shou ld not oscilla te, even in the operating point in such a way as to
the case of a false adapted load <It the cam e interference.
moment when the switch is switched,
TIl(' output side part o f the Dic ke
sinc e the hlgh-fn-qucncy pulses which
switch is an ope rational amp lifier,
otherw ise arise are controlled by the
which can be wired up to the +l/- t
receiver downs tream. T he CF300 drain
amplification using a H~ T (5). The low
circ uit thus has l OOn dampin g and is
pass filter a fter the switch has a
only loosely coupl ed to the next circuit.
limiting frequency of 1 Hz, so that the
The pre-amplifier ha s a band width of
display functi on is not 100 sluggish if
5 MHv, and an amp lification of about
the aerial is manually set. The output-
soan. side pre-voltag e potent iometer can be
The receiver used was the aut hor's used to balance the display at zero if
spectrum analyser, which is ope rated in there is no signa l (FigO) .
zero span mode. Switching to analyser
170
= """''''''''= -'-'''"'''-'''''''-- -- - - - -- -- (t ·
L: 10Wdg 4" O.5 Cul Conduclor circuil F ill,S:
T he High-Freq uency
Swit ch lit th e
I DB1 NV Pr cMm plifie r Input
1-1
cts CF
t, sec
from Aaial I· IlAl "
ll,
/ pmtition
10 termi nating I· ,\ ,
50 Ohm load , lID
\
::::y!ecrlthmugh
SwUch cycle UnF
4. eel" signa ls. all of which are of c-arthly

R ~~~ U I.T S OF orig in. It is o nly at night or at the
weekend that the author can earry c ut
OIlSERVA TION
reasonable observations in a residentia l
area . Th e daytime inte rference level
In the firsl expe riment, the solar noise dur ing the week is far too high. Many
was invcsriga red without a Dicke weak lillie earners can he detected in
the evening, and th cse are probably
switch. On various days. an increase in
inrc-rfcrcncc signals from televi sion set s
noise of between 3 and 4dR was
de tected. The variati ons can clearly be in the form of cycle harmonic s. As
tra ced to varying crwiroomcnta! in- these are narrow -band iracrfcrcncc
In ference levels. 'The solar noise was sources. ).ou can usually find a frc'C
segme nt of the hand where the re is no
then used 10 optimise th e Dicke sw itch .
"111C stead iest d isplay was obtained interference.
using the maximum inte rmed iate-Ire- Atmospheric Inversion conditio ns with
qUl.'n cy band width o f the analyser (200 overshoots arc unsuitable for observe-
k l-lz). a 500 Hz switch cycle . and a tlons. since at such times the t ntire
video hand width of 1 kl lz. 111e switch 7Ck.'1Il band is occupied by weak signals .
cy cle turned out 10 be rel at ivel y uncrir i- In case of doubt . the only thing that
ca l. The therma l noise from the wann helps is to o bserve a signal for seve ra l
ground ca ll he satisfactorily det ect ed by hours, to see whether the source moves
the measuring rig if the aeria l is swung: as the Eart h rotate s (IS - an hour).
up from O- elev:l.tioll.
So far the following objects have been
Anyone reconstructing these resun s will observed (in late Summer and Autumn):
stra ight away find a number of "susp-
171
lOOk 10 turn
-10V .10V
_10V 10k
VIDEO
trcm Anelyser
~--'--I
lO Ok ~7
' ~
1M
DC-M,llivoltmeter
0 -3'1 1 I '[;,/, •
" 10k
l OOk
:11:-" LF3 56
4<7
HP419A
•
~1 :no~I
. ~
BF245A (f
i
- tOV
, ,
1
TntegrHtioo ~ DB INV
T!lO t sec
W 4146 100k
Switch cycle
I #~5V
Fig.6: The Output -side Switch
The strong est source, apart from the Nebula in Stier dur ing January and
S1111, is the galactic centre ill the February was unsuccessful. At the time
cons lellation o f Sagitta rius . The of the search, the inter ference level in
max imu m readin g was obtained in the the 70em hand was defin itely high. At
0
South at 20 elevation, towa rds 9.00 100 MHz. the Cra b Nebula is weaker
p.m. Summer Time, at the end of by a factor of 10 than the strongest
August. Even at O' elevation, the signal sources Cassiopeia and Cygnus .
clearly rose above the thermal Earth Following these encouraging results.
noise. obtained using the simplest of aerial
A very weak signal could be found at installati ons, the author is planning to
the same observation time from an repeat the exper iment with Yagis <lim-
0
Easterly direction at 70 elevation. It ensioncd for 408 MHz and with a
was about 14dfi below the Earth noise. Dicke switch/pre-amplifi er mounted
It was possibly the Cygnus A source in directly at the distr ibuting point.
the Cygnus constellation.
In the 406 • 410 MHz reserved for
At about 10.30 p.m. one evening at the radio astronomy . a low interference
end of August. another vcry weak level should be reckoned with.
source was found below 20° elevation Moreover. a change in the QRT, should
in the Northeast. It could be assigned to offer the possibility of using a
the Cassiopeia A source. professional two-ax is rotating stand for
the experiments.
A search for the thermal signal from the
Moon and for emissions from the Crab
172
5. :::: 1.4 ' l(} U W = -118dBm

APPENDIX: ESn \ lATI :"G Consequently, the radio-astronomical
T fi E SE1\SITIVIT Y OF T ilE signa l is abou t 17dB below the therm a l
RECEIVER SYSTEM no ise.
T he simple Dicke receiver is clearly
able 10 detect signals which arc J7d B
According 10 the manufacturer. the below the inherent noise of the re -
t o -cleme nt aerial used has a gain of ce iver . Professional receiv ers attain va l-
ISdn over a dipole, which corresponds ues above 30dB here.
10 an aeria l gain of 32. With a dipole
absorption area o f
" 0 =0.13),,2 :::: 6.37 ' 10 2m
we have a Yaj,!i aeria l a bsorption area 6.
o f: LIT ERAT URE
" y :::: G . "I> : : 32"" :::: 2m2
Accordi ng to (6), the rad io source ( I ) Hermann l lagn, DK8C I: first
C3s~i()pc i aA supplies a po w ~' r flow of Results from the GilrchillgcrR3diu
S = 18600 .10-26 W/m 2l1z at 100 11Hz. Astronomy lnstallationl'apcr at
It can he estimated from (4 ) that the VHF-llJ IF 90
non-ther mal radial ion output o f a rad io
(2) Konr ad S13hl. Ge rhard Mios ga:
"OUTee falls by 6.7d B per decade when
Infra-red Tcc huolo gyl htthig-
the frequency rises. Con sequcuuy . it
Verlag Heidelbe rg 1980, p. 15
is 4dH smalle r at 410 MHz than at
100 MHz, and amount s to S410 :::: (3) Meinke -Gu ndlac h: lIi f!h.
7400. 10-26 W/m'2 HL. Fo r a rece iver Frequency Engmeer ing
band width of 200 l ll /_. the receiver Pockctbcok-a h Ed ition,
aeri al supplies a signal of : Springer-Ve rlag 1986. pp. Dl 8 ff.
Ps ::: S410 . H . " y (4 ) Kristen Roh lfs: Radi o Astronomy
Wisscnschaftlichc
:::: 7400 ' 10-26 .J.V_ · 2m2 . 2 . 1()5 II/.
Buchgcseuschan Darm stadt 1980,
m2 'lIz pp. 9 - 17
:::: 3 ' 10 I7W ::: -135dBm (5) Tiet ze-Sc he nk: Semi-Conductor
H the system noise temperature is Circuit Te chnology.St h Edit ion,
ass umed to he T = SOD K, which is Springer-Ver lag 1980. p. 405
cre dible on the basis o f the cable losses (6) Meyers Cosmos Handbo ok 5th
between the pre-amp lifier and the ae- Edition, Bibliographischcs Inxtitut
rial. then the noise out put o f the Mannhcim 1973. pp. 643 - 644
recei ver installation amounts to
+ Richard Learner: '111e Hi'itory o f
=
PR L:ToB :::: 1.38 ' 10 23(W slK ) , SOOK Astronomy; Gondrom Verlag 199 1
·2· l ()5(1 /S)
173
(~, - -- - - - - - - ------''''--'=====
Delle)' Burchard , Dipl-Ing., Box 14426, Nairobi , Kenya
Logarithmic Converters and

Measurement of their
Characteristics
v alues with a wide range ca n be logarithmic scale are known: constant

converted onlo a logarithmic sca le by relative precision and a wide range of
means IIf a logarithmic converter, to measurement 1\ measurement range of
make them easier 10 grusp . The from SO to 120dB is desirable in
accuracy, operati ve ra nge and actual elect ro-acoustics and high-frequency
frequency required dete rmine th e engineering, for the readings lie over a
choice of the appropriate circuit range with this kind of width. The
principle. requirements for accuracy of measure-
ment are usually not very high: ± l dB
is often quite sufficient. But integrated
converters can not attain this precision,
modest as it is for measuring purposes.
1.
INTRODUCTl ~- '< Logarithmic converters can operate on
various principles. This article ignores
those which operate using control proc-
A significance increase in the use of esses or oscillation feedback. The first
logarithmic conveners in the very rc- type is too slow for usc in spectrum
cent past has probably been ca used by ana tyser s or wobblcrs, while (4)
the appearance of suitable integrated provides most information on the se-
circuits. As examples, I could cite: cond type.
Berberich (2), Jinn ann (8), Schneider In order to he able to dimension and
(9) and Zim mermann (12) . The advan- measure accurate logarithmic conver-
tages of recording a reading on a ters, a sufficiently precise and sensitive
174
~===-""'=""------------- \!,.
V HF COMM UNICAT IONS 3/94
, Fi ~ " l :
'" Basic fu nct ioning of
a LUjZaril h mic
Recliner, u ~in g th e
exa mple of a Sine
:/: ---- - -
o ¥-=~--""",,,"::->'¥-=---'="::-'r.
Curve
. >00
i
signal sourc e is requ ired . Wc shall a nd yet he able to follow changes in

~x p l ain in detail how such a source cun readin g s fast enoug h. So a rectifier and
be easi ly provi ded by r ncaus open to a low-pa ss filler lire required. A single
amateurs, and how it is used. frequency is ap plied to the converte r
input if a narrow-baud application (in-
tcrm ediatc-Irequcncy sectinn) or a sin-
g lc-touc measurement h. involved . III
other appl ications. the converter has to
2.
handle more than one frequency. The re
MOll E OF OPERATION can be noise. or an add itiona l signa l in
the usefu l frequency range . A secon d
signal. which people tend 10 ignore .
An analogu e (If digita l ~a u ge , all oscil-
often stems from an insufficicn lly
lo scopc or strip cha rt record c-r, is
shielde d o scilla tor in a receiver. the
co nnected to the output of a lcgurithmic
signal from which can fa lsify the
con verter . The output must therefore
measurement during wobbling using
supply sufficiently smoothc-d o llt IX:.
broad-band tec hnology.
---1 r.<If. p'("r

H H
Recti fier 1..0..' p~'~
r- Q
FiJt.2:
T hree type s or
Series connect inn
---1 Rc<:tirlCr
H H
I""'f!:cr Low 1'''''
r- b
for LltJtgcr.
Rect ificr a nd
Low Pa ss
---1 Recnfler H H
)" 1""
Logger
~,
175
(¥'; VHF COMMUNICATIONS 3/94
---'''''--'''''''=e=='-''''-''=
Logger Precision Differential Amp
Rectifier & Low Pass
Fig,3:
A solution for the Low
Frequency range as per
Plg.za, using Analogue
Computa tional Circuits
HjIf <_ 'b
_ __ ~.~l
b 'c_:rQon't~~~~-r{;
----..........- 11- Fi g.4:
A solution for the High
Logger Rectifier Din. Amp & L. Pass Frequency range
If we begin with the formal assumption average value after a low pass, because
that the input signal ill the converter is all output curves are congruent.
distorted in a logarithm ic function, then
Comple mentar y c ircu it ellgmeefl ng
a mathe matical difficulty Immediately
makes it possible to fonn logarithms
arises with the negative half-wave . The
from negative input values in a II cases
logari th m of negative values is imagin-
which arc technically feasible. They
ary and plur i-valcnt. It' s not just a case
then come out as negative values. The
of reve rsing the sign. The way out is to
circuit element which correctly assem-
position the rectifier in front of the
hies the logarithms from the positive
logger. Inste ad of a sine function, then,
and negat ive half-waves is, once again,
an Isinl function is fed into the Jogger.
a rectifier.
The output signa l then looks like Fig. 1.
The multipliers used have been selected At high frequencies it becomes more
in such a way that the ordinates can and more difficult to carry out logar-
also he interpreted as decibels (20.1g), ithmic distortion and to rectify momen-
whilst the input voltage is multiplied by tary value s with sufficient accuracy.
ten, a hundred, etc .. The sine-form input
voltag e curve has been plotte d only
once. It goes with the input voltage Ua ~t agu:.?- _
curve, y2. So such a converter converts
eac h momentary value for the input m
voltage into the correct momentary
va lue for the output voltage. The output
1
Uo
D
value changes by 20 units if the input

value changes ...,j the factor 10. It is
lag·UI! _
immaterial in this context whether we
arc looking at the momentary or the Fi g.S: Properties of Circuit in Fig.4
176
VHF COMMUNICATIONS 3i94
"-"-==="-===------------ (~
BUI there are rectifiers with a high only for 4 decades, whereas l0l!!!in~ can
frequency rall!!c and accura te joggers function with 9 decades. Its advantage
for low frequencies. Thus we finally is that it docs not e xhibit the errors
o btain the three mea ningful com - referred h ) above. Combination e docs
binations of logger. rectifier and low not convert momentary value s. But the
pass sketched in foig.2. All three layouts rectifier can be created on an extreme ly
are used and have their advantages and broad -band basis, for example simply
disadvanta ges. The layout in Hg..2a using high-freque ncy di odes . The
suppresses negative parts of the OUlput logger. by contrast, needs 10 be
function, which are shown as dolled designed only for the relativel y low
Jines in Fig. I . This comb ination thuv fr...qucncies wh ich the low p:.iss lets
has a function-deter mined threshold and thr ough . The rectifier works in the
add itio nal errors with low input volt- quadrati c or linear range and this means
ages, which co rrespond 10 the shaded ma ny characte rist ics wh ich arc
a rea on the yl curve. TIle add itional expected from a logarithmic recti f ier
error call be avoided, in principle, by an' missing, c.g, conti nuous rectifier
point rectification. Circuit b suffers selection.
from the fact thai precise rectification.
eve n at low frequencies. is possible
i r=>-
Bur char d
F ig.6:
Successive C on ve rston:
a) Pa ra llel C lreuil
b: Seri es Circuit
LGT • I ~(" r • Recuner •

Low Pass, as FijiZA
3. . r:~--
•
SPECIM EN CIRC UITS ,
e
u.
All the tric ks of analogue comp uter
technology can be successfully appli ed
in the low-frequency range. T he circ uit logUe -
laid out with operational amplifiers -
Fig .S: Properties or C ir cuit in Fig .7
Fig.::l - following the layo ut of f ig.2a
a. O utput AC with rlgerous
will work in the vo ice frequency range
lim it
if appropriate amplifiers are selected,
b. O utput DC in Q ua dra tic
toget her with rapid tran sistors and
Recuncauon Range
diodes. bur will fail in the hig h-
c. Best App rO\:lma lio n Ran ge
frequency ra nge. We can now build a
d . Hy perbolic T a nge nt
m ilch faster, but also less compl ete .
T ranststton into Limil
operational am plifier with a sing le
c. Rated clin e
tra nsistor. A type o f transisto r for which
f, Tolerable Err or Range
=
1T 5 G llz provi des for an ope n-loop
voltage galu of from 50 10 100 at
to the first transi stor. the out put value
appro ximatel y 50 MHz, falling 011 a
will rise on a linear basis , Thi s
linear basis at higher va lues. T he circuit
ex presse ~ itsel f in the floating point
from Fi ~ .4 will thus have the desired
repr esentation o r fig.5 <IS part of an
rel at ionship between the input and
exponential function (1). If l o!! g in~ is
o utp ut voltages on ly ove r a narrow
used, a curved section is gene rated (II )
ran ge, perhaps 10 to 20UR As long as
with the desired form . Finally the
the inp ut voltage is too lnw to pro vide
am plifier is saturated and the output
sufficient current for the logarithmic
value becomes constant (Ill ).
d iodes mounted in the co unter-coupling
In order to broaden the logarithmic
range, severa l stages ca n he connected
together to a successive converter. as in
Fig.6. Para lle l operatio n (Hg.oa) requi-
res more components additiona l
dampeners and am plifiers. They ca n he
opera ted over a wider freq uency range
tha n the l-ig.a ci rcuit in every respect.
The freque ncy range of the entire
layout corresponds to that of the in-
dividual stage. Th e out put values for all
Succes..Ive Conversion u"in~ II
the grades are collecte d togeth er in a
Fi~.7 :
Dirrercnlial Amplifier, whi ch sum mation ci rcuit . A j oint low pa~s in
is a lso very su it a ble for the adder ca n also he used. instead of
the individual low-passes.
In tegration
178
'-"'-= == -"""= ""-- -- - -- -- - - (~.
In series operation. Ihe amp lification culation s ca ll be. found in Tietze and
available in each stage ls used to Sche n!::'s work (10) , Th e circuit is
provide amplified vo ltage for the next suitable for integration and so it (or
stage. The connection i.. at the someth ing ..imila r) is used in all the
"auxiliary output" po int in FigA . 1' 0 more recent inrermedi are-frequcncy in-
additi ona l c omponents a re no w regra ted c ircu its. The equipment-build-
II«eSiary, B UI the frequency errors o f ing industry bas customised circuits
all stage.. are addc-d together, which based on this princ iple. to which radio
leads. :lOOVC all, to low input values. amateu rs have no access. Thc")' can only
This can be clearly recognised in a build rigs from discrete co mponents. as
converter by Hraubach which works on per Jinnann (7), or usc first-generation
this princip le (3) . BUI if it is a case 01 a Ie ' s, which contain preciccly the tran-
narrow-bend application, :IS with Hcrbc- sistors required; thai gives bette r co rn-
ric h (I). then a frequency cycle erro r patibilu y for the characteristics and
has no ..ignificuuce . T he conven er is causes fewer temperature problems.
optimi..ed for the operating frequency. Such a solution is several degrees bette r
It is also impo rtant thai conver..ion doe .. than using an nu ermcdi utc -frequcncy
not occur instantaneously ill such :I Ie if improved acc uracy is the goa l.
converter. So here too you ca n' t expect
An emitter follower (h) can simply he
a ll the adv antages o f loga rit hmic rc-c-
conn ected to Ihe di fferent ial amplifier
tifi carion.
(a) in Fig.? in order 10 de-couple the
The re are more practica l circuits for AC. or else a To wnsend current rec-
series ope ration. which work with t ifier (el , made of two emi tte r
differential ampl ifiers. The pnncip tc followers . can be connected up (c). The
can be seen in fig.? and the cal- total outputs o f all I>1ag1.''' arc fcd into
", I
"
L
u.
'IT;; r.rror Band ~"~B!:;;~
F f~.9:
Co n..tr uetion or
" Conve rsion
.'
Charactertstic tor
Ser ies Connection or
Sl 8Jtt'S as Fi g.?
179
VHF COMMUN ICATIONS 3/94
(~ - -- - - - - -----='-""""'"''''''''''-''''''''-''''''
Fig.t O:
Logger afte r the Diode
Rectifier for a layout as
02 03
I.
per Fig .2c
appropriate summat ion circuits. The the level contro l reaches II height at
total of all AC values is the momentary which the IC at tains the combined
logging of the input voltage. The total constant em itter current. lk, the output
of all DC increa se s (i .e . if the volt age can incre ase no furt her. This is
Townsend currents are subtracted) shown hy the fact t ha t the c ha racter isti c
corr esponds to the mean arithmetica l bends into a horizontal line. The rcc -
va lue for the rect ified AC currents. tificr has a qua drat ic and a linear range,
just like diode recti fiers. The quadratic
Whilst for the first total it is a
range causes the a curve to drop in the
requ irement that the phase displacement
left-ha nd area as soon as the b curve
between the various stages is insignifi-
appe ars . Thi s cre ates II better rllngc o f
cantly sma ll, this requirement does not
best app roximation, which iii shown as
apply to the DC total. The only require-
c.
men t here is that the amplitude displac-
ement in the usefu l frequency range is Finally, the trans ition at the limit is
insignificant. The frequency range is right-ang led only if H'E is quite large. If
thu s not determined hy a rigorous phase R E '" 0 , the transition is a hyperbo lic
require ment but by a less rigoro us tangent (tall h) function. Al l practical
ampli tude requiremen t. cases lie bet ween the extrem es and
contribute to a rounding up, d, so that
Several stages as per Pig.? form a
finally a rather wide range is created
successive convener, with many proper-
with a sufficien tly low error , f.
ties of the circuit cont ributing to its
conversion characte ristics. Initially, the It is lip to the skill o f the circuit
stage amplification can he selected developer how he or she combi nes the
w hi c h IS g iven h y t h e r a t i o variou s option s into a convcr srou
Rc : (RE + 2 . UTIlk) (UT, temp erature characteristic which is as straight as
vo ltage = 26 mY). The characterist ic possible . A five-stage convener fo r
grad ient thus obta ined is shown 'I ii a in SOdB can he obtained as per Jirrnann
fig.S and corresponds to an c-function (7) with an error o f ± 2dB. Construct ing
in the floating point represen tation, If the conversion characteristic as per
Squa re-Low U, ... Pnu tz ~Pstor U2 ~Pllutz

Rcctirirr
i Fig.l1:
~1 I ~ Elimination of t he display
' .1 V - of Interference after a
lsch Quadratic Rectifier
180
f'i g.9, without taking in the rounding lip

e ffects. gives all error of ± 3dB at a
stage gain of 2OdB. r 20d fl
Halving the stage gain will reduce the

error to l/l. It is thus not that much of a tcee
problem to develop succc....ive conver - ,
IJ /a
,,
\
ters with errors of considerably Ie.... , ..
th an ± IdB using this principle.
Converters of this type will have :I
''"
frequency ra nge of a few Mill: in a Fi~.I2 : Spec tr um An 31}S<'r di..pllty
d iscrete format. Nowada ys Integrated for vertou.. ty pes of Recnrler:
'ci rcuits arc manu factured with faster a. Loaar u hmie
and faste r processes. Thus the rebtivcly b. Linear or ~I Ultre- Law
n e w Ie KE604A . it is said. can be used Re<:li fiers
with appro ximatel y constant properties
from the low -freq uenc y ra nge up 10
2 1.4 MHz (13). Similar values can be
in T I. If 10 i.. larger than It. then DJ
obtained m int! transistor arrays if tbe
act s as an additional logger . The co nve-
tra n..isto rs the y con tain guara ntee
rsion gradient becomes twice as steep.
f1 > 5(() M Hz.
II sho uld therefore he sele cted to he as
The layout in Fig.2c i.. partic ularly large as the current value supplied by
..uitablc for exp and ing the freq uency the rectifier dur ing the trans ition from
range upwards. because it is still only rbc quadratic to the line ar range. 'Iogct-
the rectifier which nee ds 10 he' dimen- her with 12 and IJ • diodes 0 2 and D3
sioned for the high treqnencic ... Even provide for temperature compensation
w it h reasona bly pri ced d io de s. over the entire conversio n range and
100 \HI, can easil y he obtained, whilst allow the zem point of the output
special diod ...s can even operate at up to voltage to be established for any rcc-
10 GHz. The characteri..tic of such tificr current. 10. desired . For T I. and
d iode rectifiers has u bend in it. with OJ for 0 1 to 0 3. it is advant ageo us to
quadratic range below 2.U1 and a Iincar select a trans istor array in which three
range above it. It is not gener ally transistors arc wired up as transdiodcs
known thai such a cha racteri stic, the (t op right in Fi!!.3). The connection
reasons for which are explained in (5), between basis and collector eliminates
can be precisely logged. The circuit for the influence of the extrinsic base
this is shown in Fig. 10 and should be resistance within tho trans istors, and we
briefly explained. have more of an ideal d iode. You call
As long as the current supplied by the find another solution to the same
rectifier, 10. is smalle r than 1], 1)1 acts problem in Viela nd (1 1).
as a Townse nd current diode with a
constant volta ge drop. The logging can
be carried out through a known process
18 1
VHF COMM UNICAT IONS 3f94
4. contains the interference signal fraction.

INFLUENCE OF TYPE OF The process functions with interference
voltage s of up to 2 ' Ur-Y 2 = 40 mv.
RECTI FIE R
The second amp lifier must have very
low offset voltage and bias current
A logarithmi c rectifier has infini te rec- valu es.
tifi er selection, i.e. it ignores all smaller With regard to its properties. the linear
signals , So it is initia lly irrelevant rectifier lies betwee n logarithmic and
whether it is first rectified and subse- quadra tic equipment. In a layout such
quently logged or vice versa, It is as Fig .Zc, you will scarce ly notice any
necessary only for the moment ary value difference, because the logging in the
to be correc tly converted at a ll times. linear range has a gradient twice as
Nor does it have any importance steep. An interference signal of the
whether the rectifier eval uates the peak same value as the wanted signal dou-
va lue or the area under the curve hies the output value in the quadratic
following a logger, as long as you jus t ra ngl~ . In the linear range, it is initiall y
disregard the add itional inaccura cies of multiplied unly by ..J 2 (1dB) , and the
junction rectifica tion for low input doub ling of the grad ient makes the
signals. However, the point rect ifier same change out of this as in the
must be capable of following the differ- quadratic range.
entia l frequency between the useful
It is much easier to look at the
sign al and an interfere nce signal, which
variatious between rect ifiers on the
is ce rtainly easier to achieve for nar-
serCC11 of a spectrum analyser (Fig.12)
row-hand applications than for broad -
than to wade through a long dcscrip-
band converters .
tion. It is known that the ideal analysis
A quadratic rectifier supplies an output f ilter, based on the best resolution and
valu e which correspo nds to the total of the fastest frequenc y changes. has a
all input power values. There is no round cone and a form factor of 60:
rect ifier selection. But this behav iour 3dB of 4.4 . Thus two spectrum lines arc
can also be put to profitable m e. The ideally represented when they arc like
inter ference oscillator or the noise dur- the thin lines in Fig.12.
ing the wobbling in receivers can create
The tota l picture obtained from a
a raised (i.e. false) base line. This can
logarithmic rectifier is shown hy the
be remedied by a circ uit as per Fig.Ll .
thick lines. In the area of the cone. it
During the beam feedback , the wanted
follow s the strongest signa l at any time.
signal genera tor is switched off and the
A slight rounding up occurs in the
switch Sch is closed. The capacitor, C,
vicinity of the picture noise, due to the
is then charged with the voltage corrc -
stocha stic nature of the noise voltage.
sponding to the interference power
Linear and quadrat ic rectifier s genera te
level. If Sch is now opened and the
the dotted line curve . The anal yser has
wan ted signal is switched on again,
clearly lost some resolution! In the
then the output vo ltage , U z, no longer
vicin ity of the noise. the level indicated
182
= """"= = ='-='---- - - - - -- - - (/':
is far too high. which ma y po ssibly not tor can do it (00), then it is eas y 10 find
be recognised if the video filter for the the po int of deviation from the idea l
cut-off frequ ency has been selected gradient, in the shape of a chang e in the
with too Iowa value. steepness of the conversion characteris-
tic . On top of that, construct ing the
entire gradient as the integration of the
stee pness gradient is diffi cult .
5. So if the gauging industry can he of no
MEASUREMENT OF furth er usc 10 us. we have to fall back
CONVERTER PR OPERTIES on physical princ iples. There is a law of
nature which call p rovide us with all
amplitudes in precise sta ges ove r a very
The usua l method of testing a loga rith- wide dynamic range in fracti ous of
mic co nvener is to connec t a signal seconds: decay ing oscillation. Czech (6)
generator in serie s and alter its output used dec aying oscillation to measure
volt age in defin ed stages. It is wort h the q ual ity of oscillation circuit s. This
having a look at the guaranteed data of led m e 10 th e idea of using th e same
the generator first . Using very precise process as a signal source for test ing
equipment. you may be able to use logarithmi c conve rters.
precise stat!es of. for example. O.l dR An oscill ation c ircuit made up o f the
"11.e absolute tole rance ca n be set components L. C and R will osci llate as
within ± Id l::l. I' ve still never see n a long as a ll the se components are con -
specification providing for the mo - stant, ill such a way tha t successive
not ony in stages we expect [rom every amplitudes arc alw ays in the same ratio .
10-Mark D/A conve r ter! Sometimes.
when preci se stages are bein g used for
through switching. another coarse at- A" = ( 1)
tcncator is wired up. and the + IdB
tole rance initially pre sent can then
become - IdR M.a.W.. {he monoto ny is applies for the logarithmic d c-crement.
20 LSB! Such a generat or is not e.. For the natural logarithm . we can
suitable for measu ring a loga rithmic also write :
conven er within whic h there arc rated
err ors of ± Id B.
(2)
Here it is certa inly more appropriate 10
modulate the signa l generator using
AM. which finally also co-rrespond s to As 20 • 19AIl/An + I can also be
changing the amplitude by a sma ll referred to as to A/dB. we get
amou nt. If we now let the output
vo ltage hunt through the area of interest
· 20 27.3
(for whic h 110 more accu rate ca libration =- - (3)
divider is required - a Preb 110 au cnue- InlO - Q Q
183
(~ - - - - - - - -- VHF COM MUNICATION S 3/94
---'-"'-"""""'''''-''''''-'''''-'''-''''''
for a circuit quality of 50/100/200/500, widths , t.. C3dB and t.. ff> the resonance
successive amplitudes have differences resistance, Rr<;s' the noise voltag e, Up
of 0.546/0.273/0.1365/O.0546dB. Recti- the initial volta ge, U,n' for l OOdB
fication, which lets the pea k negative oscillations, the numbe r of oscillations
va lue appear between two peak positive above 100dB. n. and the time for the
va lues, halves the stage height. With attenuation process can be obtained.
thoroughly achievable circuit Q values
The action of the oscill ation circu it is
of between 100 and 200, we get a
triggered by a pulse . Fig .13 shows a
grading which leaves nothing 10 be
suitab le circuit. The capacit or, C l , is
desi red .
loaded with an adjustab le voltage, This
Attenuation is complete when the am- is done slowly through a high-level
plitude has fallen below the noise resistanc e, so that no significant energy
voltage of the oscillation circuit. With a excitation is linked into the oscillation
sufficiently high input voltage, Van' a circuit. If the switching transistor is
decay rang e of l OOdB can easily be now ener gised. then the ene rgy stored
obtain ed. The noise voltage. D r- is in C, is transfe rred to the oscillation
circuit. Suitable values for C 1 can also
u, = ...; (4 . k . T · !J. f r ' R",,) (4)
be obtained by means of Table 1.
where:
The switching transi stor remai ns live
k = Bo ltzmann constant during the decaying period. Its low
I' 38' 10 23W/K " On" resistance prevent s additional
losses in the oscillation circuit. Since
T =Absolute temperature. C 1 is now parallel to C, the oscillatio n
frequency becomes somewhat lower.
This process can be repeated period i-
With the noise band width h. f"
cally if the circuit has enoug h time 10
6. fr = I::. f j dB ' ---"
'--- decay and if C 1 is again fully loaded.
2 ' sin p/2
To avoid any stress on the oscillation
circuit, the voltage is derived through a
(5)
complementa ry source follower , which
Three different oscillat ion circuits arc of cou rse contributes some noise of its
used for the measurements describ ed own. Shou ld the resonance resistance
below. The first, with a relatively low not be very high and the load not
frequency, came about because a suit- part icularly sma ll, you can even de-
able coil was in the DIY box. The other couple directly from the coil, using I or
two correspond to comm on intcrmc di- 2 coupling windings; alternative output
ate frequen cies. Table 1 lists the rel- in Fig.13.
evant oscillation circuit data. Apart
This simp le de-co upli ng can be used
from the va lues for L and C, the values
without any additional equipment in the
calc ulated using the above formulae for
measureme nt of an NE604A at 450 kHz
the logarithmic decrement, e, Ute ampli -
or 10 MHz ,
tude stage, A A, the 3dB and noise band
184
\ .
Tltble 1 Resonant Fr equen cy
5.4 kllz 450 kHz 10 MHz
Coil L 29mB 28 Wd g 0. 8 CuI. 8 Wdg 1 Cu Silvered

RM to She ll Core Ring T94-M ix I Ring T-94 Mix I
Am idon Amidon
30n F Styro flex
Ca paci to r C 300 IOnF Sryroflcx 5 x 1000F Ce ram ic I

Q 0.0 105 175 150
log. De crement e 0.09 1 O.oJ8 0.02 1
!J, Allin 1812lU li z 0 . 156 0. 182
!J, f-.ldlll A r, 300kO 2..5714 .04 kH7 66 .7/1.S kl-l z

R• • O..1711 V 6.21.:1 2 4 .8ti2
U, 37m V O. 6 3 ~lV 2.8511V
U. n for I()()d B 1100 ()) mV 285 mV
n for l OOdll 230m ~ 6411 550
Time fo r 100 dB InF Styroflex 1 .4 m ~ 55}!'§,
Coupli ng C I I nf Styron ex 47 p F Ceram ic 1
For an initial test of the process, I look Th e best energy excitati on is pro vided
a tow-Irequc ucy vo ltmete r whic h has a by a pu lse length equal 10 half the
suc cess ive converter for the linear dll oscillation pe riod (93 I1S.). SO in this
scale, with stages similar to 1'i ~ .7 . Since specia l case no circuit as per Fig.l3 is
it ha s a high input resistance of I Mo., I ne eded . Bill it i.s a lways to he rccom-
didn't even need a source follower . mended when the frequ encies arc hig h
A brief squarl' pulse fro m a function and whe n the load can 1101 he est imated
ge nerator was used 10 trigge r the act ion with sufficie nt preci sion . The lower
o f the 5.4 1.:11;. o scillation ci rc uit It can beam track in H g.14 sho ws the first le n
he see n ill the top beam track in Fig..14 . oscilla tio ns. Th e grading and the circuit
. 1SV
.2••3QV F ig. 13:
Circ uit for G enerillinll:
l:k"i:llying Oscill ati ons
L _ ---' I a:r
r>.n.
Burcha rd
185
(~, - - - - - - - - - VHF COMMUNICATIONS 3/94
----'-"'--""""''''''''='''''-'''-'''
Fig.14: The- First Ten Deca ying Fi g.IS : Testing a Five-Stage

Oscillations Converter similar to Fig.7
VI: 2V & Y2: 100mV/div VI : 200mV & Y2: lOOmV/div
X: 10ms/div X: 20ms/d iv
Q values can be determ ined from the been quadrupled. Now we ca n recog-
reduction in amplitude using equation nise a lot of detai ls. The converter has 5
(l ) . riF·IS shows the entire de caying stages and works over II range of SOtln.
process , with the voltage at the AC There are thus S clear levels to distin-
total point of the converter above and guish. <I t each of which one stage
the in put voltage below. Considera ble reaches its limit.
improvements can still be made to the
The limiting level for the earliest stage
resol ution.
in the converter lies somewhat above
For Hg.16, the zero line has been the initial voltage. The conversion char-
dis placed to the bottom edge of the actcrtsuc tonus a wave curve, which
pictur e and the Y amplification has a lways indicates II wave peak nt the
Fig.16: Better Resolution or Fig.17: Still Higher resolution using

L~ Curve fr om Fig.IS Ttmcbasc Sweep and further
Y: 50mV (0 at bottom edge) increased Yamplifications;
X: 211ms/div both a xes 2dB/div
186
F ig. IS: Measur em en t or an NE604 A

at 5." kH z
YI: 2C)(lmV & Y2: IOOmV/d iv
X: ap p. .' 5m . d iv (2OdUld iv)
point where a stag e comes to an end.

with a wave trough in between peaks.
This correlates with the curve ploucd in
F ig.9 .
To measure the curve exactly. the time
scale has to be corre lated with the Ilat
dB SI3 !!CS. To this end. we start from
Fi g.14 or 15 and alte r the time base in
such a way thai the am p litude of the
decaying oscil lation falls by 10 or even
20dH over the full screen. correspond-
ing to ) 1.6% o r 1Q'k.. We have then set
I or 2d B per d ivision and can DOW
sele ct 5. 10 o r 2OdB/d ivisioll by switch-
ing the coa rse staging of the lime base.
H g.17 show s a high resolution . in
which the Y amp lific ation has been
altered in such a way that the curve
drops below 4 5° in the centre, Th us the
errors of this converter can be measured
at ± O. 6dB. If you can usc a delayed
time base, you can exa mine the entire
curve section by sectio n.
The t\E604A interm edia te-frequency
integrated circuit contains any logarith-
m ic convener. and can stand as an
examp le of many similar products here.
18 7
(4'" VHFCOM MUNICATiONS3/94
Fig.19: Determination of Conver sion Error, both axes IOdH/di v

a. with small Load Capacitance (IOOpF)
h. wit h huge Load Capacitance (l OnF)
Sev eral deta ils of this pictu re stand out limit. In moment ary conversion . the
immediately. Three wave crests are o utp ut voltage should always fall to the
cl ea rly visible. while 11 fourth can be noise level at a i'T TO cross ing, as is
conj ectured to be at about the height of indeed the case ill H g.l 6, W hy things
the noise. There is no fifth olle funning. arc different here [ must leave O pe ll .
Th e co njec ture is obvious th at there arc
Finally. another baud -form structure is
on ly four gain stages involved in the
recognisable ill the loggl'd c urv e.
conversion. However, the dyna mic
H g.Ica show s it even more cl early. I
ran ge dearly exceeds SOdB. The stage
have no explanation for th is either.
ampli fication ca n be esti mated at 25 to
30d B from the wave crest interval. The T he top limit corresponds to the output
output voltage curve has a flat lower volt age when the peak value is mcas-
F ig.211: Representation of Lugging Fig.2!: Measurement or an NE604A

Precision at 450 kHz
YI: 200mV & Y2: lOOmV/div VI: 200mV & Y2: IOmV!div
X: lOOms/div (timebasc sweep) X: 20dB!d iv
188
V HF CO MMUNICAT IONS 3/94
~"""""",,",""-""="'------------ \'~
- .
ured. The ave rag.e value is obtained if With a load of l U l/IOOp". we already
th e load capacit ance is made big obtain the ave rage va lue, an d we also
enough. For r ig..1 9h it was selected a t see tbet J wave crests have been
l Onl-, which ce rt ainly gives rise to formed. The only other noteworthy
residual ripple, but allows the output to feature is the "tail" of the curve , the
remain fast enough for the rapid rise in slow decaying belo w -8OdB. This can
vo ltage when the action of the oscilla- not he seen at 5.4 kl-lz or even al 10
t ion circuit is triggered. The peak va lue Mil}', and co rresponds to a time COII-
and the avt:ragc value do not give stant of I ( 0 zms.. According 10 a
congruent curves . Particularly in the pe rson al repo rt from N.R ohdc (* ), he
region of high input voltage, the aver- has observed a sim ilar effect on a
ag e value curve is Flatter. The higgest TDA1576. I wouldn' t like to .say what
deviat ion from a straig ht line is at - the rea son for the effect m ight be . It is
2Od B. and a marked ben d at about - possible thai operating poin t displace -
40d n also stands out. The gradient is mcnt or loca l thenna l effects on the
ma rkedly sleeper above than bel ow. cry stal play a pa rt . Beca use o f the low
The tot al conversion error obtained li me co nsta nt . it docs not occur if t he
from Hg . l c b amo unts to exactly ± 2dn. curve is pass ed through ill a substan-
Th is is a very good reading for the tiully shorte r O ( longer tim e. Nor is it 10
small number of srugcs and the wide be seen if no more than 80dB o f the
dynamic rlm ge. logarithmic rang e is used.
And finally, Fi g.20 w as prod uced in Fina lly. a curve which is very simila r 10
order to examine the internal function - Fig..2 1 is also obtained at 10 MIl r, bill
illg of the ;.JE604 A . It was derived from without the "tail" - i.e. the curve falls
p ig. IX through a delayed time-base steadily away to about 6mV (app. -
sweep, which was trigg ered using the 'JOd B) and run s ho rizontally from then
Y2 curve. Whe n the trigger level is onwards. To produce this, the load
luuucd through. a d ifferent curve is resistance has 10 be red uced 10 50:l: 1,
produced for the momentary vo hegc wnh the otnput vo ltage still only
every time, which can now be co m - 2.5mV.
pared with Pig.L All these curves
should actuall y he simila r, which is ill
110 way the case here, For it is not only
the fOI1Jls of the ha lf-waves which arc
6.
d ifferent. '11111s the Ie in no way forms
the correct momen tary value. Not all COr\CLCSION
the advantages of logarithmic rectifica -
tion can be expected in practical lise.
The decay ing oscillation process cau
Now the behav iour at higher operating a lways be made m e of if the output of
freq uencies is natura lly also of interest. the logarithmic con verte r is sufficiently
For Fig..2 I, the i'l"E604A was connected rapid to follow the sudden voltage rise
u p to the 450 1.:1 17, oscillation circuit. when the action of the oscillation
189
(~------------'~~~~~~
circuit is triggered. The requirements the Frequency Range bet wee n 2 and
for decaying, on the other hand, are 200 MHz
comparatively easy to meet. A point in VHF Communicatims, 1185, p.36
the circuit can often he found where it (4) D.Burchard (198Q): Short· Wav e
is guaranteed - for examp le. in front of Recept ion as per the Principles of the
the low pass filter. Or the possibility Thi rt ies
exists of raising the speed by means of vt n; Communications, 1190. p.n
II few other components . as with the VHF Communications, 2J9O,p.70
NE604A here. Converters following the (5) D.Burchard ( 1991): Principles of
principles of Fig.zc can nor be meas- Rccrificetion of low AC Voltages with
ured using this procedure. Nor is this Semi-Conductor Diodes
necessary if Joggmg as per fi g. to is VHF Com mun ieat ion s, 3191, 1'.168
applied . The characteristic is not W llVC- (6) .l.Czech (1965): Oscillograph
form and the single area which calls for Mctro log y pp, 5U7 - 5 12 ff.
more detai led examin ation is the transi - Verlag Radio-l'oto- Kinot cchmk , Berlin
tio nal range between quadra tic and (7) IJi rmann ( 1987 ): A Spect rum
linear operation. Analyser fo r Ama teurs
VHF Comm unicat ion s, 3/87, 1'. 154
Two ex amp les were used to demon-
(8) JJirmann ( 1989): A Spectru m
stratc the type of curves and results
Analyser for Ama teurs
which could he expected. Using any
VHr Com munic ation s, 2Il'I9, p. IOg
logarithmic converter Ie. properties
were demonstrated which were 1I0t to (9) W.S<:hneider (I 99 2): SSB T ransc eiver
for 50 ~1 1 lz with Assemblies using
be fo u nd in the data sheet and the
50Q Technology. Part- 2
ap plication note . Those who wish 10
VI rr; Commun ications, If) 3, 1'.48
deve lop such converters themselves
(10 ) lf.T'ictzc and Ch.Scbcnck (1990):
have a precise and sensitive signal
Scrm-Cooductce Ctrcou Engineering
sou rce avail able in deca ying osc illa tion.
9th Ed ilim.N". 7 1 t'f. Springer-Ve rlag,
Op timising m easu res can he seen 011 t he
Berlin
screen imm ed iately.
( I I) C.Vid and (1987); 500Widd 13nd
Detectors
VI n; Com munic ancos, 2/87, p. ll l
(12) E.Zimmermann ( I992 ): A Simple
7. dB-linearS- Mcte r for Microwave
LIT ERATURE Adju sters
VHF Communicalions, 2j9J. 1'.1 17
(13) N.~ . (1988 ): Audio Decibel Level
(1) E.Ucrberich ( 1976) : A Spectrum Detect or with Meter Driver
Analyser for Amateur s Application Note (AN) 1991 Linear
Vin; Communicat ions, 4/80, p.2l7 Dat a Handbook tc I I, Philips,
(2) E.lkrbcrich (199 1): A Logarithmic Eindhoven
Detector, huilt with Integrated Modc les (*) B + R Ingenieurgesells cha ft 792U
Vf n-~ Co mmuniCaiions,3192, p. 165 March- Buchhc un
(3) Hfsraubach (1984) ; Power meters for
190
VHF COMMUNICAT IO NS 3/94
~===,,=,-=,c.=.. (/'
Camtech ElectroniC;?J%tfcn~~~}i:,
121Go ldings Close, Haverhill, SUff o lk, CB9 OEQ, UK " '£Ie:;? I
ITel: INT .44 (0) 144062779; Fax : .44 (0) 1440714147
IIHigh Frequency Video Demodulator Card . I

Fea tures 110 MHz U" mpur. frequency. l'k~~ey vi deo dCnWd UI<l tor'l
Switchablc ~.'C lJ{ video d(' -<~llI P.hasis + vide(: inv ert and s Wi~dl<lhle Illd .t'f
Inncuons. signal sncugth / tuumg meter . Video output - 7) .0. COH Jpo ~ 1tc
video, Au d io demodu lated outputs available <Ire (-j()( Jn Odlhn and 0.5 Watt
loud speaker amplifier. This unit is to the highest qual ity con struction mill},'
platc- throuph hole PCBs with sch-ct ive solder rc-xist finish. Avail able in kit
Iortu or rea dy assembled .
Microwave Tuner / Down Converter.

Features the ver y lates t H I commercia! m ic rowa ve nucgra tcd c irc uits a m!
surface mo unt technology. Ultra low noi se PHEMT GaAs FLT fron t end
followed by stripline i JJl'J gl~ Filter and MMI C am plifier III a 5 Gi ll, Gilbert
cell mix er r':xh ihits .li d B conversion gain and t unes (1-0) XOO 10
l()()() I\-1H/, wnh au If output lip to 2()(J Ml lz, Also features all externa l LO
output to drive a synthcsiscr. such as Ca nucch 2 .4 ( Ji ll. syuth hoard . Unit
COIlIl'S complete ly rea dy a~ se mhkd with instr uctions .
TV Audio Modulator.
A full feat ured audio modulato r to com pliment your vid eo station. Co ntai ns
microphone amplifier, 50j.l~ pre-cmphaviv fi ltering . speech compressor.
L'i kHz low pass filter jJ1(J mudularor / 5.5 to 6.0 MH z osci llator. Outpu t is
•• fully buffered and filtere d 10 provide Odb m (j.l 75.0. m odulat ed ± 50 kltz.
Available in kit fonu or ready assembled.
For details of these items or for a copy of our latest Catalogue, please
write or phone to the address above. Credil card facilities available.
191
(f', VHF CQMMUNICAl iONS 3194
PRI NT ED CIRCUIT BOARDS· KITS· COMPONENTS

for projects featured in VHF Communications
IlBINV Spectr u m Anal yser Art No.
PCB DR1NV 006 IF Amplifier Ed.2/X9 0699 7 OM 35.00
PCB Dn lNV 007 LO~PLL Ed.2/89 06995 OM 35.00
PCB OOINV 008 Crystal l-iner Ed.3 /89 06998 OM 35.00
pe n DHINV 009 Sweep Generato r Ed.3/89 069'J6 DM 35.00
PCB DBi NV 010 Digital Store Ed.3&4fJI 06477 OM 44.lXI
PCB DBI NV 011 Track in g Ge nerator Ed.2,IY2 064 79 DM 31.00
rc n DlH NVO l2 B roadband vco Ed.4/92 06480 OM 33.00
1450 MHz
pen DB INV 013 Broadband veo Ed.4/92 06481 OM :U (X)
11)00 MIL,.
OIl6NT Measur ing Aids for (JII F Amateurs Ar t No. ED, 4/19'1.'
reB DB6NT OOI Meas uring Amp 10 2.5 GlTz 0(371) DM 36.00
PCB DB6NT 002 Frequency Divider 10 5.5 Gllz 0638 1 DM 3ti,OO
()J81-:"~ 2.' cm FM ·A TV Receiver Art No. ED. 4/1993

PCB DJ8ES 001 Converter 06347 OM 22.00
PCH I)JRES 002 Digita l f requen cy Indicator 06350 DM 19.80
pen DJ8ES 003 II--' Amplifier 0615 3 DM 15.00
PC B OHmS 004 Demodulator 06356 OM 19.00
1J.l8ES 28/144 Mill Tr ansvertcr Ar t No. ED. ~/I 99J
ren DJKES 019 Transvcrrcr 144/28 Ml lz 06384 OM 16.00

reo OJ8ES 020 Hybrid Amplifier 144 Mllz 06386 OM 35.00
DF9 PJ, lligh Sta bility Lo w Noise PS lJ Ar t No. ED. 1I199J

ren nr.qPL 001 30 Volt PSU 06378 DM 19.00
pcn np9PL 002 Pre-Srabiliscr 06376 DM 20.00
PCB OF9PL 003 Precision Stabiliser 06377 DM 21.00
To obta in supplie s o f the above or any reo's, kits, components, etc. , previously
adve rtised in VIlF Communications. please contac t KM Publications for Ste rling
price s. cIC.• at the ad dress shown on the inside front cover o f this magazine.
192
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l JIIF Compendium Pis.! &. 2; K.L.Wc incr J)J9HO £2 7.50
UHF Co mpendium Pls.3 & 4; K.LWeincr DJ9HO £27 5 0
Post & packing: UK T£3.50; Overseas +£7 .00; Ai rmail +£1 2.00
An Introduction to Amateur Television; Mike Woo ding Cl6IQ M £ 5 ,00

Slow Scan Television Explained; Mike Wooding G6IQM £ 5.00
The ATV Compendium; M ike Wood in~ (,61QM r 3.50
T V Sec rets Vo lume I; 1\T VQ Ma gazin e r 7.50
TV Sec rets Volume II; ATVQ Magazine £ 17.9:)
A G uide to 2.1clTl Televi sion; Scvcrnside TV Group .£ 350
Ju st a Few Lines (a history of the birth of the BBC) £ 5.00
l'ost & packmg per book: UK +10.80: Ove rseas +£ 1.25; Ain na il +£2.75
VHF Communications :
1994 Subscription, Volume 26 ns.oo
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(it) ~~~MUNICATlON5 A Publication for the Radio Aml).

E:specitlJly Covering VH F, UH F ora Micro waves

V" lume Nn. 26 A lll llnlll • FAliliOfl 3/ 1994

Richa rd A Pormeto. Ph.D. Improving Impedance Bandwidth 142 • 150

Matja z Vidmar A DI Y Receiver for GPS and 151 • 165

I1r.Tng . Jochen Jin nann Radio-Astronomical Experiments 166 - 173

I1ctlcf Burchard Dipl.-Ing. Logarithmic Converte rs and 174 - 190

KM Publications, 5 WareOrchard, Barby, Rugby, CV23 aUF, UK

Harald Fleckner, DeB UG

A 13cm GaAsFET Power

The circuit was developed using the

Fi ~ . l: Screen Dump from the PUFF CAD Pa ckage

co uld therefore be attained only with a

'" t-, " .

Fig.4: Circuit of the Belli GaAs F ET Power Amplifier

Fi g.I shows th e screen dum p from stable can easily be indicated. A

NAME TYPE VALUE STYLE CO M ~IE :-ITS

CI TC 2.5pf Te flonC eramic Tri mmer

1\1.. ~ "" 1<61p<w

.1 .I O ver tay ror the PSU

TYPE VALUE STY I.E COM MENTS

F tj;!;.9: PS U Com po nent List

vo ura ble conditions. it is advisable to covered comp letely hy the simulation.

o , 0906 9,SV 11,l A - 0904 9V IO,2A Transfer Cheractcrts-

t.eist unqsverstarkunq PA 13·5W

(7) B ertclsmeier, R.: PUFF Design (10) Unger/H arth.High-Prequency

The VHf Communications

£10.00 including shipping

Richard A. Formato. Ph.D., KJPOO

F ig. l : Ya ~i Array Cil·o me l T.v

Fig.2: VSWR vs Norm alised Reactance

C -F D ipole Inpu~ Resistance

C- F Dipole Input Reactance

8 .82 8 .84 e.ee 8. 89 8 . 11'1

3 Elen en~ Vagi. Free - Space

3 :3 ._-- -(.:. ....•-.-- -r'-- -t-- - - ..+..;.,- -- - ----~ .

--·········-----······r ., ::.~.', -,- .., "'. - &8

1 ... ,~.,_~ .• ~..A_,..L'--~~. . . . . . .. . . .~ .....A.......~._~.A ..L.. .._

GPS Theory and Practice

Marjaz Vidmar S53MV (ex Yll 3 lIMV, YT 3 M)

A DIY Receiver for GPS and

3. attitude are unknown in a navigation

Fig:.l1 : P r inciple Block Diagram of it GPS/<i l ,O NASS Receiver

Since the bandwidth of th e desired

fnl t !j<altd Oata

(""" ", TiJo,,,,"

ing the whole IF signal processing of a GPS or GLONAS S signal is a constant

6139 kf!l' Mer

Fi~. 13 : ( i PS Receiver Block Diagr am

F i~. 14: G LONASS Receiver Block Diagr a m

101+\1 G'S r- 1e.t AbtQI!-Oc!.I . "

~" ~ '''. T." r-

Although code lock may be maintained

Very low noise aort al amplifier for th e

IThe Parabolic 24cm Preamplifierl

GAIN >40d B across the band

£120 + £5 post and packing

KM Publications, 5 Ware Orchard, Barby, Nr.Rugby,

The British Am atcurTel evision Club