IF Amplifier Research Articles

Design and Implementation of an S-band Receiver for Small Satellite Based on the Manufactured Subsystems

In this work the design and implementaion of a receiver for small satellites in range of 1.9 GHz to 3.0 GHz frequency were presented. We concentrated on developing a new architecture for receiving satellites in challenging environments and integrated some of the author’s previously published designs. By using the protected mechanism for RF circuit of receiver, a mutil-stage in IF amplifier and automatic gain control in IF amplifer has been designed, this receiver has a higher gain (78 dB), a larger dynamic ranger (80 dB), a high stability and sensitivity (110 dBm) at 2.15 GHz frequency. The receiver module works well; and due to the flexible structure, easy assembly and low-cost characteristics, it can be applied for small satellites and ground stations.

A 16-GHz Bandwidth Cryogenic IF Amplifier With 4-K Noise Temperature for Sub-mm Radio-Astronomy Receivers

A 16-GHz Bandwidth Cryogenic IF Amplifier With 4-K Noise Temperature for Sub-mm Radio-Astronomy Receivers

A Low-Phase-Noise RF Up/Down-Converter for Cost-Effective 5G Millimeter-Wave Test Solutions

The increasing demand for millimeter-wave (mmWave) frequencies with wider signal bandwidths, such as 5G NR, requires large investments on test equipment. This work presents a 5G mmWave up/down-converter with a 40 GHz LO, fabricated in custom PCBs with off-the-shelf components. The mmWave converter has broad IF and RF bandwidths of 1∼5 GHz and 21∼45 GHz, and the built-in LO generates 20∼29.5 GHz and 33.5∼40 GHz of output. To achieve high linearity of the converter simultaneously, the LO must produce low-phase-noise and be capable of high harmonics/spur rejection, and design techniques related to these features are demonstrated. Additionally, a reconfigurable IF amplifier for bi-directional conversion is included and demonstrates low gain variation to maintain the linearity of the wideband modulation signals. The final designed converter is tested with 5G OFDM 64-QAM 100 MHz 1-CC (4-CC) signals and shows RF/IF output power of -3/8 dBm with a linear range of 35 (30)/38 (33) dB at an EVM of25 dB.

A 260–300-GHz Mixer-First IQ Receiver With Fundamental LO Driver in 130-nm SiGe Process

We report a 280-GHz mixer-first quadrature receiver in 130-nm SiGe that achieves a peak gain of 25 dB, an IF bandwidth of 30-GHz, and a minimum single-sideband (SSB) noise figure (NF) of 18.2 dB. The receiver is comprised of two Gilbert-cell mixers with swapped RF and local oscillation (LO) ports that downconvert the RF signal at 260–299 GHz to I/Q IF signals at 1–40 GHz by using a pseudo-differential LO driver at 259 GHz. In each channel, a wideband IF amplifier was used for an aimed conversion gain of higher than 20 dB. Combined with a differentia hybrid coupler, an integrated 259-GHz driving amplifier (DA) was integrated to generate the quadrature LO signals for I and Q channels. The measured amplitude and phase imbalance between the I and Q channels are around 4 dB and 4°, respectively. The fabricated chip occupies a whole area of 1.12 mm2 and consumes a dc power of 384 mW.

Methods for Model Complexity Reduction for the Nonlinear Calibration of Amplifiers Using Volterra Kernels

Volterra models allow modeling nonlinear dynamical systems, even though they require the estimation of a large number of parameters and have, consequently, potentially large computational costs. The pruning of Volterra models is thus of fundamental importance to reduce the computational costs of nonlinear calibration, and improve stability and speed, while preserving accuracy. Several techniques (LASSO, DOMP and OBS) and their variants (WLASSO and OBD) are compared in this paper for the experimental calibration of an IF amplifier. The results show that Volterra models can be simplified, yielding models that are 4–5 times sparser, with a limited impact on accuracy. About 6 dB of improved Error Vector Magnitude (EVM) is obtained, improving the dynamic range of the amplifiers. The Symbol Error Rate (SER) is greatly reduced by calibration at a large input power, and pruning reduces the model complexity without hindering SER. Hence, pruning allows improving the dynamic range of the amplifier, with almost an order of magnitude reduction in model complexity. We propose the OBS technique, used in the neural network field, in conjunction with the better known DOMP technique, to prune the model with the best accuracy. The simulations show, in fact, that the OBS and DOMP techniques outperform the others, and OBD, LASSO and WLASSO are, in turn, less efficient. A methodology for pruning in the complex domain is described, based on the Frisch–Waugh–Lovell (FWL) theorem, to separate the linear and nonlinear sections of the model. This is essential because linear models are used for equalization and cannot be pruned to preserve model generality vis-a-vis channel variations, whereas nonlinear models must be pruned as much as possible to minimize the computational overhead. This methodology can be extended to models other than the Volterra one, as the only conditions we impose on the nonlinear model are that it is feedforward and linear in the parameters.

A Reflectionless Receiver With Absorptive IF Amplifier and Dual-Path Noise-Canceling LNA

This article presents a 22.6–39.2-GHz reflectionless receiver (RX) capable of reducing the in-band intermodulation and high-order mixing products. Such RX consists of an absorptive IF amplifier, a double-balance passive mixer, and a dual-path noise-canceling low noise amplifier (LNA). The absorptive IF amplifier is utilized to suppress the out-of-band signal reflected back to mixer, which can reduce the intermodulation and high-order mixing products caused by the remixing of the out-of-band signals. Meanwhile, the dual-path noise-canceling LNA is used for achieving low noise figure (NF) in a wide frequency range. To verify the aforementioned principle, a reflectionless RX is implemented and fabricated using a conventional 28-nm CMOS technology. The measurement shows the minimum NF of 3.6 dB and the peak input third-order intercept point (IIP3) of −11.7 dBm. Besides, the proposed RX can support multi-Gb/s, 256-quadratic amplitude modulation (QAM)/1024-QAM modulation signals.

A Low-Noise W-Band Receiver in a 28-nm CMOS Technology

A passive mixer-first receiver architecture operating at a frequency range between 70 and 86 GHz, together with a two-stage LO buffer and a low noise IF amplifier, is presented and designed in a 28-nm bulk CMOS technology. The receiver achieves a single-sideband noise figure (SSB NF) of less than 10 dB for IF frequencies above 400 kHz with a minimum of 9 dB above 1 MHz. The implemented chip features a voltage gain of about 14 dB and a 1-dB compression point of −5 dBm. The receiver core occupies an area of <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mathbf {0.09}~{\text {mm}^{2}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and consumes 55 mA from a 1.8-V power supply including all ON-chip biasing circuits.

Terahertz Signal Source and Receiver Operating Near 600 GHz and Their 3-D Imaging Application

In this article, a set of oscillators and a heterodyne image receiver operating near 600 GHz have been developed, each based on a 250-nm InP heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) technology and a 130-nm SiGe HBT technology, respectively. The oscillators are based on the common-base cross-coupled push–push topology, which employed coupled-line loads for improved output power and efficiency with a small area. The measured oscillation frequency ranges of the three oscillators with different coupled-line lengths were 628–682, 556–610, and 509–548 GHz, respectively, with a tuning capability achieved with bias variation. The maximum output power and the dc-to-RF efficiency achieved with the oscillators were −10 dBm and 0.19%, respectively. The heterodyne receiver, which consists of a mixer, an IF amplifier, and an IF detector, exhibited a maximum responsivity of 469 kV/W and a minimum noise equivalent power (NEP) of 0.64 pW/Hz1/2. A transmission-mode 3-D THz tomography imaging setup was established with one of the fabricated oscillators and the heterodyne receiver employed as the signal source and the image detector, respectively. With the imaging setup, a successful reconstruction of 3-D images of a target object was demonstrated based on the filtered back-projection algorithm.

Perancangan Trainer Komunikasi Receiver Frequency Modulation sebagai Media Pembelajaran untuk Teknik Elektro

On a Frequency Modulation (FM) receiver there is an interference caused which is usually due to the distance and strong signal from the FM transmitter carried to the FM receiver device. The system used PLL (Phase Loocked Loop) system on the oscillator. An oscillator is an electronic device that produces a voltage signal output. The use of oscillators as the carrier of the signal and the message signal produces waves with a certain frequency value, and has a frequency shift of 56,25KHz. The output of the FM receiver is a signal containing of the FM transmitter in the 88MHz-108MHz range. The signals received from the transmitter are short audio and sine signals, so they can be analyzed based on their waves in oscilloscopes and matlab experiments. In this trainer, there are tuners, IF amplifier, multiplexer demodulator, and digital counter frequency. The IC used is LA1260, LA3361, LB3500, LC7265. The result of making an FM receiver trainer get a satisfaction value of the practical test 80,12% based on aspects of media appearance, technical quality and usefulness. A device designed for UTM Electrical Engineering students as a trainer in FM telecommunications system learning medium practiced in the UTM Department of Electrical Engineering

A 50-Gb/s 134-GHz 16-QAM 3-m Dielectric Waveguide Transceiver System Implemented in 22-nm FinFET CMOS

This letter presents a 134 GHz superheterodyne transceiver system in 22nm CMOS for dielectric waveguides measured at reaches up to 3 meters. Greater than 12 GHz of RF bandwidth and 16 QAM signaling combine to achieve 50 Gbps with a measured EVM of -19.8 dB (5x10-6 BER) at a total power consumption of 494 mW from a 1.0 V supply. External 2x2 matrix equalization is employed to equalize channel impairments. The system achieves an FoM of 3.3 pJ/bit/m with the highest reported data rate for waveguide links at a distance greater than 1 m to date. Key transceiver circuit building blocks are described including RF signal paths, wideband baseband amplifiers and filters, an IF amplifier with 44% fractional bandwidth and a coil-less 53.6GHz quadrature divider.

2.4 GHz BLE Receiver With Power-Efficient Quadrature RF-to-Baseband-Current-Reuse Architecture for Low-Power IoT Applications

In this paper, a 2.4 GHz Bluetooth low energy receiver employing a power-efficient quadrature RF-to-baseband-current-reuse architecture is presented for low-power low-voltage internet of things applications. The proposed quadrature RF-to-baseband-current-reuse RF front-end consists of a low-noise transconductance amplifier, an active-type polyphase filter-based quadrature generator, transimpedance amplifiers, and double-balanced current-mode passive mixers on a single dc current path. An input matching network is used to perform power-constrained simultaneous noise and input power matching and 1/ <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$f$ </tex-math></inline-formula> noise reduction in the RF and baseband domains, respectively. The quadrature RF signals are provided to the single-quadrature mixers through an embedded active-type polyphase filter-based quadrature generator. The implemented Bluetooth low energy receiver is composed of the RF-to-baseband-current-reuse RF front-end, IF amplifiers, two-stage passive- <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">RC</i> polyphase filter, and fifth-order Chebyshev-II <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$G_{m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-C</i> filters. The proposed design was fabricated using a 65-nm CMOS process and characterized primarily in the Bluetooth low energy operating frequency bands. The active die area of the implemented receiver was 0.85 mm <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> , and the receiver drew a bias current of 1.41 mA from a nominal supply voltage of 0.8 V. The Bluetooth low energy receiver achieved a noise figure of 13.2 dB, conversion gain of 42 dB, image rejection ratio of more than 30 dB, and input-referred third-order intercept point of −25 dBm.

A 43–97-GHz Mixer-First Front-End With Quadrature Input Matching and On-Chip Image Rejection

This article presents a wideband millimeter-wave (mmWave) receiver front-end that covers the frequency range from 43 to 97 GHz, supporting the operation in the major parts of the V-, E-, and W-bands. The front-end incorporates a passive mixer-first topology to achieve high linearity and wideband performance. The front-end adopts I/Q generation at the RF port, using a coupled-line coupler (CLC), rather than at the local oscillator (LO) port to mitigate the crosstalk of the overlapping I/Q LO signals especially present at high frequencies. The CLC at the RF input facilitates ultrawide band input matching. The front-end implements the multi-gate gm3 cancellation technique at the IF amplifiers to preserve the linearity and provide gain at the IF section. Image rejection capabilities using a current mode transformer-based IF 90° coupler are implemented on chip and demonstrated with measurements. The front-end prototype is fabricated on the GlobalFoundries 22-nm FD-SOI CMOS process and it demonstrates an ultra-wideband performance across the frequency range 43-97 GHz (2.25:1 bandwidth) with image rejection of up to 32 dB, IIP3 of 1.6-5.2 dBm, and gain of 15 dB. The implementation used is low-IF topology with 3.8-GHz IF frequency and 1-GHz bandwidth. Furthermore, the measurement results show that the front-end supports high-speed modulated signals of up to 6-Gbps 64QAM modulation data.

Optimization of Monolithic Gilbert Cell Mixer for Frequency Band 935-960 MHz

This paper presents the electrical and layout design and optimization of Gilbert Cell mixer for frequency band of 935-960 MHz with LO-frequency of 915 MHz. The obtained maximum conversion gain is 22.2 dB, IM3 is -11.5 dBm, and ICP is -25.5 dBm, respectively. The design consist of generic Gilbert Cell mixer with differential RF input and IF amplifier with differential output. The technology of choice is VTT08 with bipolar junction transistors (BJT).

W-band system-on-chip electron cyclotron emission imaging system on DIII-D.

Monolithic, millimeter-wave "system-on-chip" (SoC) technology has been employed in heterodyne receiver integrated circuit radiometers in a newly developed Electron Cyclotron Emission Imaging (ECEI) system on the DIII-D tokamak for 2D electron temperature profile and fluctuation evolution diagnostics. A prototype module operating in the E-band (72 GHz-80 GHz) was first employed in a 2 × 10 element array that demonstrated significant improvements over the previous quasi-optical Schottky diode mixer arrays during the 2018 operational campaign of the DIII-D tokamak. For compatibility with International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor relevant scenarios on DIII-D, the SoC ECEI system was upgraded with 20 horn-waveguide receiver modules. Each individual module contains a University of California Davis designed W-band (75 GHz-110 GHz) receiver die that integrates a broadband low noise amplifier, a double balanced down-converting mixer, and a ×4 multiplier on the local oscillator (LO) chain. A ×2 multiplier and two IF amplifiers are packaged and selected to further boost the signal strength and downconvert the signal frequency. The upgraded W-band array exhibits >30 dB additional gain and 20× improvement in noise temperature compared with the previous Schottky diode radio frequency mixer input systems; an internal 8 times multiplier chain is used to bring down the LO frequency below 12 GHz, thereby obviating the need for a large aperture for quasi-optical LO coupling and replacing it with coaxial connectors. Horn-waveguide shielding housing avoids out-of-band noise interference on each individual module. The upgraded ECEI system plays an important role for absolute electron temperature evolution and fluctuation measurements for edge and core region transport physics studies.

An mm-Wave CMOS I–Q Subharmonic Resistive Mixer for Wideband Zero-IF Receivers

In this letter, we propose a novel wideband subharmonically pumped fully differential I–Q resistive mixer architecture, which eliminates the necessity for on-chip dc-blocking capacitors to integrate IF amplifiers. The proposed differential subharmonic mixer topology is verified by presenting a CMOS millimeter-wave monolithic integrated circuit (MMIC), which includes the mixer and two on-chip differential IF amplifiers at the mixer’s I- and Q-channels. The 3-dB IF frequency bandwidth is measured from 0.01 to 5 GHz with a peak conversion gain (CG) of −2 dB and an image rejection ratio (IRR) of more than 25 dB over the IF frequency range. The proposed mixer covers the input signal (RF) frequency from 170 to 185 GHz. The mixer has also been tested with an on-chip voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) and shows −4.7-dB CG with a 3-dB IF bandwidth from 0.01 to 4.5 GHz.

A Four-Channel CMOS Front-End for Interference-Robust GNSS Receiver

A four-channel receiver front-end is designed and implemented for interference- and jamming-robust global navigation satellite system (GNSS) in a 0.18-μm CMOS technology. The front-end consists of four identical RF-to-IF signal paths including low-noise amplifiers (LNAs), mixers and IF amplifiers. In addition, it also includes a phase-locked loop (PLL), which synthesizes the local oscillator (LO) signal, and a serial peripheral interface (SPI) for parameter adjustment. To improve the interference and jamming robustness, a novel linearity improvement technology and LO duty cycle adjustment method are applied in LNA and mixer design, respectively. The receiver achieves a gain of 40 dB, an input-referred third-order intercept point (IIP3) of −8 dBm and a jammer-to-signal power ratio (JSR) of 72 dB under 1.8-V and 3.3-V supply, while occupying a 4 × 5 mm2 die area including the electrostatic discharge (ESD) I/O pads.

1961 Symposium digest — sixth part of the digest — first half

This tutorial paper defines the various concepts of bandwidth used in RF-interference measurements, explains their significance, and indicates their inter-relationships. The approach is to examine the conventional selectivity curve of an IF amplifier in terms of bandwidths to steady-state signals. Impulse response of the IF amplifier is also presented and the importance thereto of the coefficient of coupling in double-tuned IF transformers is discussed. For both steady-state and transient signals, the basic concepts of effective bandwidth are presented. This concept is applied to IF amplifiers for three different types of effective bandwidth, steady-state, random noise, and impulse, and the significance of each is examined. For any given IF amplifier, each is related to the response of a given physical system and, hence, they are interrelated. These inter-relationships are indicated.

Liquid crystal polymer receiver modules for electron cyclotron emission imaging on the DIII-D tokamak.

A new generation of millimeter-wave heterodyne imaging receiver arrays has been developed and demonstrated on the DIII-D electron cyclotron emission imaging (ECEI) system. Improved circuit integration, improved noise performance, and enhanced shielding from out-of-band emission are made possible by using advanced liquid crystal polymer (LCP) substrates and monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) receiver chips. This array exhibits ∼15 dB additional gain and >30× reduction in noise temperature compared to previous generation ECEI arrays. Each LCP horn-waveguide module houses a 3 × 3 mm GaAs MMIC receiver chip, which consists of a low noise millimeter-wave preamplifier, balanced mixer, and IF amplifier together with a local oscillator multiplier chain driven at ∼12 GHz. A proof-of-principle partial LCP instrument with 5 poloidal channels was installed on DIII-D in 2017, with a full proof-of-principle system (20 poloidal × 8 radial channels) installed and commissioned in early 2018. The enhanced shielding of the LCP modules is seen to greatly reduce the sensitivity of ECEI signals to out-of-band microwave noise which has plagued previous ECEI studies on DIII-D. The LCP ECEI system is expected to be a valuable diagnostic tool for pedestal region measurements, focusing particularly on electron temperature evolution during edge localized mode bursting.

63.5–65.5-GHz Transmit/Receive Phased-Array Communication Link With 0.5–2 Gb/s at 100–800 m and ± 50° Scan Angles

This paper presents a 32-element phased array centered at 64 GHz using multiple SiGe chips on a single printed-circuit board. The antenna element is a series-fed patch array, which provides directivity in the elevation plane. The transmit array results in an effective isotropic radiated power of 42± 2 dBm at 63–65.5 GHz, while the receive array provides an electronic gain of 24 dB and a system noise figure <7.7 dB, including antenna loss, T/R switch, beamformer, and transceiver. The arrays can be scanned to ±50° in the azimuth using a 5-bit phase shifter on the SiGe chip without degradation in sidelobes and maintaining a near-ideal pattern. A communication link between two phased arrays at 100, 300, and 800 m is also demonstrated, and employs one array on the transmit side and another array on the receive side, together with external mixers and IF amplifiers. The link performance was measured for different scan angles and modulation formats. Data rates of 0.5–2 Gb/s using 16-QAM and QPSK waveforms are demonstrated at 100–800 m, with 2-Gb/s data rate at 300 m and ~500-Mb/s data rate at 800 m. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first system-level demonstration of a silicon-based Gb/s 60-GHz phased array over hundreds of meters. Application areas are in point-to-multipoint links, back-haul and front-haul links, and reconfigurable mesh networks for advanced communication systems.

An X-Band Frequency-Modulated Continuous-Wave Radar Sensor System With a Single-Antenna Interface for Ranging Applications

In this paper, a highly integrated frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) radar system with a single-antenna interface for range sensing is proposed. In this paper, a circulator structure was developed and used in the radar system with the single-antenna interface. This structure capitalizes on frequency orthogonality to separate transmitted and received signals; thus, the isolation can be improved by using integrated filters to further suppress transmitter leakage. Without an additional back-end leakage cancellation mechanism and antenna tuner, the single-antenna FMCW radar system can be devised. The proposed system is composed of a radar transceiver, a frequency synthesizer, an analog signal processor, and an AD converter; the system is fabricated using a 65-nm CMOS technology, occupies a chip area of 1.9 mm2, and consumes 147-mW dc power under a 1.2-V power supply. The implemented front-end circuit can provide an output power of 10.5 dBm with power efficiency of 30%, over 1-GHz impedance matching, an insertion loss of 2 dB, a maximum noise figure of 16.8 dB (including the following IF amplifier), $P_{1\,\text {dB}}$ of 2 dBm, and IIP3 of 7 dBm. A wireless measurement process proved that the system can provide a 37-cm range resolution over a 50-m range for a $20 \times 20$ cm2 copper plate. Finally, an FMCW radar front-end board and a digital signal processing board were implemented for data analysis, thus completing the FMCW radar sensor unit. The proposed system can be utilized for multiple applications including 1-D object tracking, 2-D localization, and 3-D object tracking.