Software Defined Radio Lec 3 RF Front-End for SDR

Sajjad Hussain, MCS-NUST

Outline for Todays Lecture

RF implementation issues Purpose of RF Front End Dynamic Range RF Receiver Front-End Topologies Enhanced Flexibility of RF Front-End with SDRs Importance of Components in Over All performance Noise and Distortion in RF ADC/DAC distortion Use of MEMS for Flexible RF design

Purpose of RF FrontEnd

RX

Filtering of Unwanted Signals Down-conversion Amplification ADC

TX

DAC Up-conversion Power Amplification Bandwidth Limitation

Need to have a balance between different components ADC and RF dynamic range DSP engr. must be aware of limitations of RF frontend to compensate them in DSP

SDR RF FrontEnd

RF Front End- Basic Functions

Objectives of RF Frontend are Reject as many undesired signals as possible Amplification of the deisred signal to the range of ADC with minimal distortion Minimize AWGN Achieve a dynamic range which is compatible to that of ADC
Must separate the desired signal (-70 to -130 dBm) from the background RF environment (0 to -20 dBm) sets the system SNR

Achieving adequate dynamic range is one of the central issues in RF design

Overall sys. must have considerable dynamic range to accommodate high power background signals to low power desired signals The wider the BW, more the interference and noise and hence difficult to achieve high dynamic range

Dynamic Range

Key design challenge in RF front-end Measure of highest and lowest level signals that can be simultaneously accommodated by radio Strong relationship b/w battery consumption and dynamic range important tradeoff for mobile systems Limited by physical characteristics of various components Improvements Variable approaches to RF part design (proper selection of components and good circuit design techniques) DSP algorithms after ADC Good initial RF designs low interference and dynamic range constraints in subsequent systems Dynamic Range Lower bound -- AWGN sources (thermal noise, ADC quantization, jitter etc) Upper bound interference (co-channel, adjacent channel, self-induced etc.) Attenuation of high-level interference signals to avoid non-linearities presence of low-level desired signals Presence of DC bias

Dynamic Range

RF Receiver Front-End Topologies

A no. of different RF front-end topologies exist each with its own advantages and disadvantages Most common

Dual Conversion Single Conversion Tuned Radio Freq. receivers Sensitivity Selectivity Stability Dynamic Range Spurious Response Scalability

Selection of a topology depends on

TRF

RF RX Topologies - TRF

TRF (Tuned Radio Freq.) topology BPF, LNA, AGC BPF filter quality factor of 107 for 30 kHz signal at 900 MHz with 60dB attenuation for channel 60 kHz away ADC directly samples RF input Constraints in practical TRF transceiver

ADC for high freq. signals high power consumption with high sample-rate Requires high dynamic range of 100 dB for wide BW Extreme demands on tunable RF filter to remove interferences in the dynamic range Advantage minimal no. of analog parts required

Single-Mixer

RF RX Topologies Direct Conversion

Homodyne, Zero-IF Single mixing stage direct conversion to baseband Channel selection and ADC at baseband Mixers have high power consumption

Low power consumption for 1-stage mixing can be traded-off for high dynamic range

Isolation b/w Local Oscillator (LO) and input ports is desirable but difficult to achieve

Capacitive coupling Tracking and feedback of DC error

Error due to non-matching of I and Q branch phase and amplitudes

Eliminate with DSP Disadvantage as compared with TRF

Homodyne

RF RX Topologies Heterodyne Receiver

Most common RF Front-end for radios Freq. translating the incoming signal to an IF that is fixed and independent of Fc BW<IF<Fc superheterodyne Good RF components availability for IF Freqs. At times, two stages of downconversion relaxed filtering requirements low Filter Quality Factor Disadvantage larger circuit and higher power consumption I and Q branches must be matched to prevent distortion

Hetererodyne Receivers Image Problem

Downconversion also leads to upconversion of a part of band To mitigate this, an image filter precedes the mixer to suppress the low-freq interfering band 6080 dB attenuation Careful freq. planning to relieve filter req.

RF RX Topologies Comparison

Tradeoff of sensitivity vs. selectivity TRF receiver more suitable for SDR
Filter

requirements make the multi-mode operation difficult Retuning

Complex interaction between multiple RF components Simpler the RF chain more predictable response after retuning

Factors to consider : channel spacing, freq. plan, spurious response, total gain etc.

Enhanced Flexibility of RF with SDR

Ways in which software based tuning of RF components can be incorporated in classical RF chain
Mixers Biasing and phase distortion can be run-time tuned by software Amplifiers Sophisticated power management strategies in software Cyclic On/Off for TDMA systems DSP based diversity combining Software based IQ extraction and channelization

Importance of Components on Overall performance Important for the DSP engineer to understand basic radio components and associated distortion tradeoff exists in complexity of RF and baseband chain Antennas :
Underrated

component in the overall link Much of the link gain can be gained or lost in the selection of antenna For multi-mode support of SDR, antenna design is of crucial importance

Importance of Components on Overall performance Antennas :

antennas support BW of about 10% of Fc

Hard to support of multiple cellular (900 MHz and 2 GHz) with single antenna

Several

antennas may be required increase

in size

Components - Duplexers

Duplexers/Diplexers
RF

filters adding isolation between transmitting and receiving band several orders of difference b/w power of TX and RX expensive devices Challenges for SDR duplexers + diplexers

Importance of Components on Overall performance RF Filters :

Used for rejecting out-of-band interference Also help isolate the receiver from transmitter Should have small noise, low loss, provide selectivity without compromise on BW

Low Noise Amplifier :

Induction of low noise because of amplification in downstream

Importance of Components on Overall performance

RF Mixer :

Used for down-conversion and can be a major source of inter-modulation distortion Non-linear device Increasing LO power can reduce non-linearity at the cost of increased power consumption

Local Oscillator :

Should have good tuning range and low phase noise Multiplying a received signal by a noisy LO is equivalent in the frequency domain of convolving their two spectra, producing a widened resulting signal spectrum

AGC

AGC Ensures that signal has a voltage compatible with that of ADC input range In some cases, it is advantageous to implement AGC as series of amplifiers strategically placed in the circuit with gain that can be turned on or off via software to keep circuit operating at ideal power levels for variable range and types of signals Difficult to use in wide (multi-) band systems

Weak signals in noise and clipping of strong signals

AGC Circuit

Compression Ratio (M)= change in input level in dB/ change in output level in dB

Digital AGC and Operating Modes

ADC

ADC

Most difficult component to select and places the most constraints on system design biggest power consumer in RX If perfect ADCs available, TRF architecture would be chosen Generally tradeoff b/w sampling-rate, dynamic-range, ADC resolution and power consumption Currently SDR implementations are for base-station applications because of high power consumption of the ADC

TX Architectures

Tends to be less complex than RX High power consumption in talk mode Dual conversion TX is more practical due to better isolation properties at cost of more expense and power consumption Use of complex signal processing techs.

TX Components on Overall performance

RF and IF VCOs : -- good phase noise characteristics + los power consumption Mixer / Upconverter : -- good linear characteristics to reduce spurious products IQ Modulators - should be well matched to avoid constellation distortion Power amplifier - should be wideband, linear and low noise

tradeoff between linearity and power-efficiency AMPS (Class B 60%), IS-95 (Class AB- 30-45%), GSM (Class BC 40-50%) In practice less than 25% battery power is effectively used during transmission

In full duplex system, leakage of TX noise in RX circuitry sensitivity reduced

Noise and Distortion in RF Chain

limiting factors for a transceiver performance quantifying noise and distortion is necessary to quantify transceiver performance Noise Characterization
Source 1 - Thermal noise in resistive components Antenna represents first source of noise Source 2- ADC (thermal + quantization noise)

Error because of finite precision binary representation

Noise Figure
Noise Figure (NF) describes how much noise is added by different elements of receiver chain Most common definition NF = SNRin/SNRout NF provides indication how device degrades SNR. Device manufacturers supplies the NF NF total can be calculated by referring all the NFs back to the antenna Once total NF is determined, sensitivity level of the RX can be determined for a minimal SNR Keep analog components noise contribution less than ADCs noise contribution is a good practice

S (dBm)=Noise floor (dBm)+SNRmin(dB) Noise floor (dBm)=10log(kTeB)+NFtotal dB

Noise Figure Components Placement

Best to have LNA placed as early in the system as possible because of its high gain

Noise and Distortion in RF Chain

Characterization

Distortion occurs because of non-linearities in system It takes the form of harmonics Cross-modulation distortion

Weak signal and strong interferer enters a non-linearity amplitude variations Multiple-signals in the non-linear device interact in a mixing process to create signals at sum freqs.

Inter- modulation distortion

Distortion - ADC-DAC distortion

ADC/DAC introduce both noise (thermal/ quantization) and distortion Distortion due to aperture jitter If the signal level exceeds max level of ADC results in non-linear distortion requirement of AGC

Distortion - Pre-distortion
Predistortion: for

good spectral efficiency, pulse shaping is used non-constant envelope

Predistortion

is done before power amplification to avoid the spectral broadening such that output of amplifier is the ideal output Analog /digital (better-tunable)

Pre-distortion

Use of MEMS in RF
Micro-mechanical components to add flexibility and low loss at RF Use of miniaturized/micro mechanical devices Low loss wide bandwidth switches Variable capacitors/inductors/varactors/ high quality factor filters/ tuners / reconfigurable antennas High level of sophistication and reliability with low cost and power consumption because of IC based fabrication a solution for needed flexibility in RF Reduces interference = dynamic range requirements on components low power

MEMS

Conclusion
SDRs

must consider the impact of imperfections in RF Limitation removal by downstream DSP Better interference removal filters pre-distortion for non-linear power amps software flexibility of gains tradeoff of sampling-rate with resolution for ADC etc. Adaptive filtering of harmonics Bottleneck of RF can be removed by early sampling but constrained by ADC tech. cost/power