Abstract
Within an increasingly connected world, the exponential growth in the deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) applications presents a significant challenge in power and data transfer optimisation. Currently, the maximization of Radio Frequency (RF) system power gain depends on the design of efficient, commercial chips, and on the integration of these chips by using complex RF simulations to verify bespoke configurations. However, even if a standard 50Ω transmitter’s chip has an efficiency of 90%, the overall power efficiency of the RF system can be reduced by 10% if coupled with a standard antenna of 72Ω. Hence, it is necessary for scalable IoT networks to have optimal RF system design for every transceiver: for example, impedance mismatching between a transmitter’s antenna and chip leads to a significant reduction of the corresponding RF system’s overall power efficiency. This work presents a versatile design framework, based on well-known theoretical methods (i.e., transducer gain, power wave approach, transmission line theory), for the optimal design in terms of power delivered to a load of a typical RF system, which consists of an antenna, a matching network, a load (e.g., integrated circuit) and transmission lines which connect all these parts. The aim of this design framework is not only to reduce the computational effort needed for the design and prototyping of power efficient RF systems, but also to increase the accuracy of the analysis, based on the explanatory analysis within our design framework. Simulated and measured results verify the accuracy of this proposed design framework over a 0–4 GHz spectrum. Finally, a case study based on the design of an RF system for Bluetooth applications demonstrates the benefits of this RF design framework.
Highlights
The number of installed Internet of Things (IoT) endpoints could reach 50 billions units in 2030 [1]
Such efficient designs for bespoke Radio Frequency (RF) systems with strong packaging constraints are usually achieved through RF simulations software which restrains the access to efficient system design
This paper described a framework to design efficient RF systems that is based on theoretical approaches instead of RF simulations, and that achieves similar results to RF computer aided (CAD) software
Summary
The number of installed Internet of Things (IoT) endpoints could reach 50 billions units in 2030 [1]. Its analysis and optimization are usually based on either fullelectromagnetic analysis, e.g., use of finite element method (FEM), Method of Moments (MoM), etc., or on typical RF models [32] In addition to this RF systems design approach, our work within this paper is to present a review and harmonization of different theoretical techniques of impedance matching and to summarise through the presentation of a versatile design framework, based on these well-known theoretical methods such as the transducer gain [41], the transmission line theory [42] or the power waves concept [43].
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