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Darabi Integraded RF Front End
Darabi Integraded RF Front End
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMSI: REGULAR PAPERS, VOL. 58, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2011
Index TermsCellular, duplexers, EDGE, electrical balance, filters, frequency division duplexing, frequency selectivity, front end,
GSM, passive, quality factor, SAW filters, software-defined radios,
WCDMA.
I. INTRODUCTION
the large gain of the low noise amplifier (LNA) occurs. The
filter typically requires a narrow bandwidth set by a given application and a very sharp stop-band. Consequently, due to its
very high-quality nature, it is typically implemented externally,
which adds considerably to the cost and size of the reference
design.
Moreover, because the filter bandwidth and center frequency
are inevitably not programmable, for every band or mode of operation, a dedicated input and its corresponding filter are needed.
These items further add to the cost, and more importantly, oppose the promise of maximum hardware sharing offered by the
SDR architecture shown in Fig. 1(b). This circumstance continues to be one of the greatest obstacles to realizing true software-defined radios.
In this paper, we introduce several circuit techniques to address this great challenge, enabling highly programmable and
tunable front-end filters and duplexers integrated along with the
rest of the CMOS RF IC. The paper is organized as follows:
Section II provides more details of system level requirements of
the radio front end. The main focus is on cellular applications,
which are the most challenging realization of SDR. Sections III
and IV are dedicated to 2G and 3G receivers, followed by a
discussion of transmitters in Section V. Duplexer techniques
are described in Section VI, and conclusions are presented in
Section VII.
II. FRONT-END INTEGRATION CHALLENGES AND SYSTEM
REQUIREMENTS
In this section, we discuss the challenges and high-level requirements of the integration of the SAW filters for 2/3G transceivers. Because cellular is the most demanding wireless standard with regard to filtering, we mostly focus on that.
As shown in Fig. 3, in a GSM receiver, a weak desirable signal
dBm or 2.5 V) and
3 dB above the reference sensitivity (
as close as 20/80 MHz to the desirable signal at the edge of the
band is specified for low/high band cases, to be accompanied by
very large in-band and out-of-band blockers (as large as 0 dBm).
Thus, for the case of a GSM/EDGE receiver, the main requirement arises from the radio tolerance to the 0 dBm blocker. The
blocker is a static sine wave and imposes only compression issues.
Knowing that the in-band blockers (subject to almost no RF
dBm at 3 MHz away (Fig. 3), the
filtering) are as large as
RF filter needs to provide at least 23 dB (approximately) of attenuation on the out-of-band blocker to reduce it to the level that
the RX front end can handle. If realized by inductors and capacitors, the corresponding quality factor (Q) would be greater than
100, thus making it impractical to be realized on-chip, and especially in a regular bulk CMOS process.
dBm is speciNote that even though a sensitivity of
fied in the standard, most advanced handsets today target for
dBm sensitivity or better, which translates to a total noise
figure of 5 dB for the entire system (assuming 200 kHz bandwidth and 5 dB signal-to-noise ratio or SNR). With a 1 dB loss
budget for the switch and 1.5 dB for the SAW filter, the receiver noise figure must be about 2.5 dB. On the other hand,
a SAW-less receiver can enjoy a higher noise figure of 4 dB to
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kHz
dBm
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMSI: REGULAR PAPERS, VOL. 58, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2011
For the case of 3G radios, the problem arises from the full-duplex nature of the system, that is, the simultaneous operation of
the RX and TX (Fig. 6). Ideally, an external duplexer realized
by two highly selective filters separates the receive and transmit
signals, but in practice, due to the finite isolation of the duplexer,
some of the strong TX signals leak to the RX input, causing two
issues: First, the TX noise falling in the RX band effectively degrades the receive noise figure. Second, when mixed by a large
out-of-band blocker (for example the blocker at half-duplex frequency) due to the front-end third-order nonlinearity the RX is
desensitized. To overcome these issues, external filters are traditionally placed at the TX and RX ports to suppress the TX
noise and leakage, thus relaxing the phase noise and linearity
requirements of the transceiver. In the case of the transmitter
output, the SAW filter relaxes the noise requirement of the TX
chain by providing some filtering, whereas the receiver SAW
filter attenuates the TX residual leakage and any other blocker,
thereby relaxing the linearity requirements of the RX chain.
Similar concerns exist in the case of the long term evolution (LTE) standard. For the LTE standard, the out-of-band filtering requirements are the same as those required for 2G and
dBm, which is the worst case for LTE, is still the
3G (
dominant requirement for GSM). Due to the wider bandwidth,
however, the in-band blocking requirement for LTE is more
stringent. This requirement, however, mainly imposes greater
challenges on the integrated channel-select filter design, not the
RF front end. Note that similar to 3G, LTE must support the
FDD option as well. For other shorter-range standards [wireless
personal area network (WPAN) or wireless local area network
(WLAN)] the blocking requirements are far less stringent. For
example, in Bluetooth applications, the out-of-band blockers are
dBm (from 02 GHz, and
GHz), as opspecified to be
posed to 0 dBm in the case of GSM. The recent demand for
integrating WPAN and WLAN devices with cell phones does
impose more challenging blocking requirements, however, because of the large TX signal of the cellular device coupling with
the other embedded devices (although the cellular device still
has the most stringent in-band/out-of-band blocking requirements).
For these reasons, current cellular platforms use several external filters and duplexers to alleviate noise, compression, and
linearity issues imposed by either the blockers or the TX leakage
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMSI: REGULAR PAPERS, VOL. 58, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2011
1980s [20], we realized the following alternative approach. Consider the low-pass SC filter of Fig. 12, where a sampling freis applied. Due to the Nyquist limit (NY), the maxquency of
, leaving only one replica of
imum allowable frequency is
the low-pass response. Now assume we have N replicas of the
th of a period rotating clocksame filter, each turning on at
wise. It can be shown [20] that now the Nyquist limit is extended
by N times, allowing other replicas of the filter response, particularly the one at , to be extracted.
An example of a 4-path realization is shown in Fig. 13. It
can be shown [21] that, as expected, base-band impedance of
is translated to
, in series with the switch resistance,
, where
is the 4-phase clock frequency applied to the
switches as illustrated in Fig. 13.
To extend the flat region and improve the stop-band rejection,
it is crucial to minimize the switch resistance with respect to the
parasitic impedance at the input of the filter. For typical values
of switch sizes and RF parasitics, a stop-band rejection of up to
20 dB is feasible with one stage of filtering.
Shown in Fig. 14 is the actual circuit implementation of the
4-phase filter, where to minimize noise and linearity, the baseis simply reduced to a capacitor
.
band impedance
For applications with wider channel bandwidth, the baseband
impedance may be replaced by a parallel RC.
The BPF is implemented differentially to make it robust
to common-mode noise. In GSM low bands, the out-of-band
blockers can be as close as 20 MHz to the desired signal. Thus,
,
to determine the minimum size of the baseband capacitor
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or intermodulation at the input devices of the LNA. This attenuation, however, is not sufficient for 0 dBm blockers at a
20 MHz offset, which is required for low band. Therefore, a
second high-Q BPF is used at the inputs of the cascode devices.
This additional filtering guarantees that the attenuated blockers
do not cause large swings at the LNA output, although the desired signal experiences the intended amplification by the LNA.
Furthermore, the downconversion current-driven passive mixer,
along with the low-pass response of the transimpedance amplifier, is used as the third high-Q BPF. For this purpose, the
switches of the passive mixer must be driven by the same 25%
duty-cycle signal that clock the two other high-Q BPFs. Before
we present the measured results, we briefly discuss some of nonideal effects associated with the proposed filtering technique.
D. N-Path Filtering Nonideal Effects
Despite the simplicity of the filter, there are several factors
that must be carefully considered because they can potentially
impact the RX performance. As shown in Fig. 17, a noisy
LO signal driving the switches reciprocally downconverts
the blocker on the top of the desirable signal. Depending
on whether the phase-noise components between four LO
are common-mode or differential,
clocks
the downconverted noise components can have various phase
relationships among themselves. To summarize, each capacitor
holds three types of voltages: 1) the downconverted desired
signal at around dc; 2) the downconverted and attenuated
; and 3) the reciprocally downconverted
blocker at
blocker by the LO phase-noise, which is at dc as well. Looking
back from the RF, the first two types are upconverted to the RF
and eventually create RF voltages at the desired and blocker
frequencies, respectively. The third type of capacitor voltages,
however, which are emerged from the LO phase-noise, appear
as an RF noise voltage at around LO, which degrade the receiver
noise figure.
The exact phase noise analysis of the filter is quite cumbersome and beyond the scope of this paper. Due to its importance, however, we summarize the final outcome as follows:
For a 0 dBm blocker at a 20 MHz offset, a phase noise of
dBc Hz is shown to create an input-referred noise floor of
dBm Hz, assuming everything else is ideal. This noise
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMSI: REGULAR PAPERS, VOL. 58, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2011
Fig. 21. (a) Measured noise figure at the LNA input. (b) Measured PCS band
sensitivity at the antenna.
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TABLE I
SUMMARY OF SAW-LESS RECEIVER APPROACHES
where
is the blocker power specified to be
dBm,
less the 25 dB rejection, the sensitivity for the blocking is
dBm
MHz
dB, and the SNR is
dB, assuming a processing gain of 21 dB (or 128). This calculation
of
dBm. This result is obviously a function
leads to an
of the duplexer isolation and filtering and can vary based on the
platform but is certainly very challenging given that the blocker
can be as close as 22.5 MHz, subject to little filtering in the relatively wideband LNA. Similar to the third-order nonlinearity,
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMSI: REGULAR PAPERS, VOL. 58, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2011
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eral peculiar characteristics: First, all HT ports can be simultaneously matched; second, HT ports are bi-conjugate (TX and RX
are electrically isolated from each other, as are the antenna and
); and third, the incoming power from
balancing resistor
one port can be split in any ratio between the two receiving ports.
The HT shown in Fig. 28 is a balun with three ports connected
and matched to the RX, TX, and antenna. The fourth port, which
.
is the center tap, is connected to the balancing resistor
For the ideal balun to operate as a HT, the values of the port resistance should satisfy the following requirements:
than 250 MHz, limited only by pad, bondwire, and other parasitics.
As for the performance of the ideal balun, the insertion loss
(IL) is 3 dB for both the TX and the RX. As shown in Fig. 30,
this loss is the result of the reciprocity, which is a characteristic of any passive network. In other words, if the antenna is
pledged to deliver 100% power to the receiver for zero receiver
insertion loss, so would be the receiver to the antenna. This condition works against delivering the full power from the antenna
to the TX. Theoretically, half of the power would be wasted,
and in the case of the hybrid transformer, the power would be
dissipated in the fourth terminal (the balancing resistor). Thus,
the electrical balance duplexer suffers from a fundamental 3 dB
loss. A practical balun suffers an additional Ohmic loss, as it is
formed by coupling two separate inductors. Thus, in a monolithic balun, the loss and the coupling trade off with each other.
To reduce the Ohmic loss of the HT, an autotransformer (implemented as a differential inductor) may be used alternatively
[33]. The simplicity of the implementation yields lower loss for
the same coupling, which is about 0.5 dB here.
The transformer could be skewed in favor of the transmitter
or the receiver at the expense of degrading one loss for the other.
The transmitter insertion loss versus that of the receiver is shown
in Fig. 31. At the midpoint, both the RX and TX experience an
ideal loss of 3 dB. The transformer, however, can be skewed to
have fewer turns on the transmitter side (with a ratio of 0.63,
as shown in the example in Fig. 31) to reduce the loss to about
2 dB. This will increase the RX loss, however, to about 4 dB
when matched to 50 . This IL tradeoff potentially present in
the duplexer can be circumvented when we note that the absolute power level at the LNA input is irrelevant to the RX operationall that matters is signal-to-noise ratio. In other words,
the RX IL and the effective NF of the duplexer are not necessarily identical, which is not the case for an external SAW duplexer whose two ports must terminate in 50 . Therefore, in
Once all ports are matched, the balance is achieved, and the TX
and the RX are perfectly isolated. The isolation is merely a function of the matching between the antenna and the balancing resistor, and thus, ideally, is frequency-independent. This condition, which is unlike the external duplexers that rely on selectivity, can be implemented on-chip, where good resolution and
matching can be achieved.
B. Prototype Implementation
For proof of concept, a prototype duplexer for 3/4G applications based on the HT in Fig. 28 is implemented (Fig. 29) [34].
At balance, there is no net differential voltage across the balun,
and so zero self-inductance current flows. The duplexer is balanced when the voltage at the antenna port is equal to that at
the balancing network. Consequently, the TX signal appears as
common-mode and does not create a voltage across the LNA
input inductor. This scheme yields an isolation bandwidth (the
bandwidth where isolation remains better than 50 dB) of better
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMSI: REGULAR PAPERS, VOL. 58, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2011
the common mode at its two input terminals, without the benefit
of the third winding.
D. Antenna Mismatch
Fig. 32. LNA circuit.
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Although techniques proposed here are generic and not frequency- or application-dependent, examples demonstrated here
cover cellular design, which is the most challenging from a
filtering perspective. Both the filtering and electrical balance
schemes work well over a wide range of frequency and could
be used in generic SDRs, up to 6 GHz and beyond.
With the circuit and architectural techniques proposed here,
realization of SAW-less radios with integrated duplexers is imminent and inevitable.
Fig. 35. Prototype duplexer die photo.
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Hooman Darabi received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of California,
Los Angeles in 1999.
He is currently a Senior Technical Director with
Broadcom Corporation, Irvine, CA. His interests include analog and RF IC design for wireless communications, including Bluetooth, WLAN, and cellular
applications.
Ahmad Mirzaei received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of California,
Los Angeles, in 2006.
He is currently a Principal Scientist with
Broadcom Corporation, Irvine, CA. His interests
include analog and RF IC design for wireless communications.
Mohyee Mikhemar received the B.S. and M.S. degrees with honors in electrical engineering from Ain
Shams University, Egypt, in 2000 and 2004, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of
California, Los Angeles, in 2009.
Currently, he is a Senior Staff Scientist at the
advanced RF research and development department with Broadcom Corporation, Irvine, CA. His
research interests include low power multiband
and multimode radio design in CMOS, multiband
duplexers, and RF filters on silicon and digitally
assisted RF circuits.