Broadband Input Block of Radio Receiver for Software-Defined Radio Devices

Abstract

Abstract In the paper a cost-effective input block of the SDR receiver for 0.9 — 2.4 GHz frequency band built of capacitive-tuned selective amplifier and broadband Vivaldi antenna is presented. The applied selective amplifier consists of three identical sections of tunable filters and two stages of monolithic broadband amplifiers. The single filter section proposed by the authors, due to its ability to absorb parasitic inductances of varicap diodes, simplifies usage of encapsulated varicap diodes in design of tunable in broad band selective filters dedicated to input stages of the receivers. Moreover, proposed filter section has small variation of in-band insertion loss in comparison to varicap-tuned filters built of coupled transmission lines which are commonly applied in input blocks of the microwave receivers. The described selective amplifier could be easily integrated on a single substrate with the Vivaldi antenna which is a cost effective way of fabrication of the tunable in broad band input block of a receiver that has desired gain, selectivity and directivity of the antenna.