IMAGE REJECTION MIXER

PROVIDING PRECISION IMAGE

REJECTION
Patent issuing Authority : United States Patent
Patent number

: US 7,369,835 B2

Publication Date

: May 6, 2008

Inventors

: Divier Margairaz, San Jose, CA (US);

Pierre Favrat, Milpitas, CA (US);
Alain-Serge Porret, Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Dominique python, Sunnyvale, CA (US)

Original Assignee

: Xceive Corporation, Santa Clara, CA (US)

Abstract
The present invention is based on the designing of an image rejection mixer circuit topology
which converts a high frequency RF signal into a low frequency IF signal and remove the unwanted
image signal present in the receives signal. It has two mixer, one local oscillator frequency signal
generator, two phase converter, two output adjust circuit and one combiner. One phase converter is
connected at the input side of one mixer and another phase converter is connected with the output side of
the respective mixer. Image rejection mixer receives the high frequency RF signal at its input terminal and
send it to the two mixer input. Mixer circuit compare the incoming RF signal with Local oscillator signal
and gives the absolute difference of that two signal as its output. Mixer output signal is used as the input
for output adjust circuit and output adjust circuit modify the signal and creates a mixed output signal.
Combiner combines the two mixed output signal generated by the two output adjust circuit and gives the
IF signal of low frequency. At the time of comparing the RF signal with LO signal, Image rejection mixer
check the unwanted signal present in the receive signal and it removes it out without disturbing its
properties or the message carried by the RF signal.

Background of the Invention

Mixer circuits are basically used in Radar system, telephony system and television tuner which
have a very short wavelength. These systems require a front end circuits which can easily receive the high

frequency RF signal. But to detect the message carried out by the RF signal, it is required to reduce the
frequency of that signal to an intermediate signal. So mixer circuits are used by the receiver to reduce the
frequency.
But it is seen that the incoming RF signal receives by the receiver contains some unwanted signal.
Due to this unwanted signal the actual message gets disturb or lost by some amount. As the incoming
signal has a large frequency it is impossible by the receiver to detect the unwanted signal. So receiver
needs a circuit which can easily remove the unwanted signal from the incoming signal and also it can able
to reduce the frequency of the incoming signal. Image rejection mixer can do this two operation
simultaneously inside the receiver.
So the present invention is a controllable switch which takes one or two incoming signal whose
frequency is above or below the local oscillators frequency. It down-convert the high side local oscillator
frequency from the incoming signal or down-convert the incoming signal from the low side of the local
oscillator frequency.

Field of the invention

The present invention mentioned here is related to a mixer design which is used in radar
detection, telephony, television tuner. The present invention mainly deals with down-conversion of
incoming signal to a lower intermediate frequency signal. The present invention mixer removes the
unwanted image signal and noise signal from the incoming signal.

Description of Related Art

The receiver circuit of a communication system uses a tuner circuit to select the incoming radio
frequency signal frequency. Incoming signal is received by the input terminal of the receiver input circuit.
The input circuit is consisting of a band pass filter, band stop filter and a variable gain amplifier. To
generate an intermediate signal of lower frequency, output of the RF input circuit is send to the tuner
circuit. Tuner circuit tunes the input RF signal frequency to a desired frequency. Tuner circuit is
consisting of one or more mixer circuit, variable local oscillator for generating LO signal. LO signal is
basically used to control the incoming signal. Based on the requirement of IF signal frequency local
oscillator frequency is selected. The output IF signal frequency is equal to the magnitude of the difference
of the incoming signal frequency and local oscillator signal frequency. As the frequency is converting

from higher to lower, it is called down conversion.

But conventional tuner system encounters a common problem due to the presence of
unwanted signal with the desired signal. The mixer circuit of the tuner actually convert both the

unwanted signal and desired signals. So the interference between the unwanted signal and
desired signal occurs inside the receiver. Amplitude of the unwanted signal is more than that of
desired signal, which creates a strong interference and loose some information encoded by input
RF circuit.
So to remove the unwanted signal, image rejection mixer circuit topology is used during
the conversion from RF signal to intermediate signal. It has two mixer circuit. It receives the
incoming RF signal and send it to the mixer circuits input terminal. To generate a local oscillator
frequency, a tunable voltage-controlled oscillator is used. Two phase converter are used in this
design topology. Both the phase converters are used by one of the two mixer. One is connected
with VCO and mixer, while another is connected with mixer output terminal and combiner.
Combiner is used to combine the two output signal generated by the two mixer circuit. At the
output terminal of the combiner, the unwanted frequency signals are completely removed.

Summary of the present invention

According to the presence invention, image rejection mixer takes the RF signal as the incoming
signal and reduce its frequency to intermediate frequency by using a Local oscillator frequency signal.
The image rejection mixer is consisting of input terminal, two mixer circuit, two phase converter, two
output adjust circuit and a combiner. The two adjust circuits are used to modify the signal waveform and
to remove all signal component which has some image frequency in the output signal of the mixer.

Brief description of the Drawings

Figure No.-1 represents a theoretical schematic diagram of an image rejection mixer circuit;
Figure No.-2 represents a simple block diagram of a tuner system used in broadcast channel;
Figure No.-3 represents a frequency domain analysis plot. The interference problem arises due to the
superimpose of image frequency signal and desired signal is shown here;
Figure No.-4 represents the proposed circuit diagram of an image rejection mixer;
Figure No.-5 represents the output signal waveform of the two mixer circuits;
Figure No.-6 represents the designed schematic diagram of the image rejection mixer;
Figure No.-7 represents the designed circuit diagram of the image rejection mixer whose output adjust
circuit uses some passive electrical component to adjusting the gain and phase shift;

Figure No.-8 represents the designed circuit diagram of the image rejection mixer whose output adjust
circuit is a low-pass filter type.

Detail Description of the Preferred Invention

It is already known that image rejection mixer is used to reduce the higher frequency into lower
frequency and to remove the unwanted signal from incoming signal. According to the invention, image
rejection mixer contains two output adjust circuits, which are connected with the two mixer. Output adjust
circuit modify the output signal coming from the mixer circuit to achieve a near perfect image rejection
signal. It creates a balancing between the two mixer output. Two types of output adjust circuits are
discussed here. One output adjust circuit uses some passive electrical component as a switch to control
the gain and phase shift of both the mixer circuits output. Another output adjust circuit uses a switchable
low-pass filter to adjust the gain and phase shift of the mixers output. Both mixer and output load
provides a mixed output signal in desired format (It may be in voltage form or current form). MOSFETs
are used electronic switch for the output load stage.
In an image rejection mixer, mismatch of devices used in the load stages of the two mixer causes
a mixed output signals with different phase shift or gain. So it is very important to match the devices used
in output load circuit. The present invention is trying to create a balance in between the two mixer, so that
mixed output signal can be perfect and image rejection quality can be improved. Resistors are used to
provide appropriate gain to the output. Capacitors are used to eliminate any kind of phase shift
mismatches in between the two mixer output. Switches are used to provides extra impedance to the output
load stage circuit. Through programmable switch also the resistance and capacitance value can be
changed.
In case of programmable switch, it first calculates the amount of image frequency present in the
signal, and then impedance value is calculated and added to the circuits. The most important things in this
invention is that the output signal of the two mixers are differential one.

We claim:
1. An image rejection mixer is consisting of
one input terminal for receiving the input RF signal;
two mixer circuit that takes RF signal and LO signal frequency as input and give output signal to the
output load stage circuit;
two phase converter to convert the phase of local oscillator frequency signal and one mixer output
signal;
two output load adjust circuit to modify the output signal according to the requirement;
one combiner to add the two output signal coming from the two output adjust circuit.

2. Output adjust circuit is used along with output load circuit to modify the impedance of respective
output load stage of respective mixer and uses some passive electrical component for providing extra
impedance.
3. Image rejection mixer in claim 2, passive component is consisting of resistor and capacitor with same
or different value of resistance and capacitance.
4. Image rejection mixer in claim 1, output load circuits are low-pass filter which take the input from
output signal of respective mixer and provides a filtered output signal.

5. Image rejection mixer of claim 4, low-pass filter is composed of:

An input node for receiving the respective signal from the respected mixer;
A resistor, connected in-between input node and output node;
Switch ably passive electrical components, connected in parallel with output node and power
supply.
6. Image rejection mixer of claim 1, one of the phase converter gives 90 phase conversion and
another phase converter gives -90 phase conversion.
7. Image rejection mixer of claim1, combiner composed of one or more summer.