UNIT II-Transceivers

for Millimeter Waves

Contents
• Millimeter wave link budget
• Transceiver Architecture
• Transceiver without mixer
• Receiver without local oscillator
• Millimeter wave calibration
• Millimeter wave Antennas

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 Millimeter wave link budget

• Link Budget - signal-power plan for a system

• Capabilities of the system under specific operating conditions for the standard specified
data rates, ranges, and bit error rates.
• Parameters:
• Path loss , = 68dB
• Average noise power per bit N (dB)
• Average noise power per bit noise figure
• Tolerable path loss PL (dB) =
• Maximum operating range (m)
Where,
is the average Tx power (dBm)
is the Tx antenna gain (dBi)
is the Rx antenna gain (dBi)
S is the minimum signal-to-noise ratio E b/N0 for the additive white Gaussian noise
(AWGN) channel (dB)
is the shadowing link margin (dB)
I is the implementation loss (dB), including filter distortion, phase noise, and frequency
errors
N is the path loss exponent, subject to scenarios (IEEE 802.15.3c)
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• The input noise of the converter is the thermal noise floor limit,

• Considering the bandwidth into account, the input noise level is calculated as

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Problem: A geostationary satellite link operates over 35-36 GHz band with a transmit
carrier power of 120 W, transmit antenna gain = 34dB, IF bandwidth = 20MHz,
maximum distance 39000kms. The receive antenna gain is 30 dB and has an effective
temperature 100K. The requires minimum SNR is 10 dB. Check for link margin
(suggested minimum value is 3dB).

SNR required at the output of the receive antenna is 13 dB

Path loss = = 215.3 dB
= 120 W =50.8 dBm
= 8.91x
SNR =
Hence suggested value of SNR cant be achieved.
To improve SNR:
Power of transmit signal can be increased
Gain of Tx and Rx antenna can be increased
Effective temperature can be reduced

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 Transceiver Architecture
• Millimeter wave solutions for high data rate transmission at 60 GHz still have to be
determined.
• Design of a 60 GHz radio front-end architecture.
 Superheterodyning architecture
 Direct conversion architecture
 Software radio architecture
 Six-port technology
• Design of antennas
• Millimeter-wave (MMW) radiometers are a special
class of instruments based on broadband
passive receivers.
They measure physical temperature,
molecular absorption, or emissivity
of an object, environment.
• Split Block technology – packaging

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1. Superheterodyning architecture:
.• 60 GHz RF front-end architecture which will be integrated on-chip solution.

• Requires more components and more DC power-not preferred for mobile devices.
• Receiving branch
Receiving antenna, a low noise amplifier, and a mixer that down converts
the signal from millimeter wave range to intermediate frequency (IF) range
• Transmitting branch
mixer, a power amplifier (PA), and the transmitting antenna.
Patch antennas (integrated) .
The mixers are image rejecting mixers
• Frequency generation function

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• A radio receiver generally includes an antenna section filter, a low noise amplifier, a down
conversion mixer, an intermediate frequency stage, and a demodulator.
• Antenna section filter receives RF-modulated signals and provides them to the low noise
amplifier, the amplified RF signals is given to the down conversion mixer, to have
intermediate frequency using a local oscillator.
• The IF stage includes one or more local oscillators, one or more mixers, and one or more
adders to step-down the frequency of the intermediate frequency signals to a base-band
frequency.
• The IF stage provides the base-band signal to the demodulator which, based on the
modulation/demodulation protocol, recaptures the data.
Advantages : Accurate, high performance
Disadvantages:
• Too many components
• BPF occupies large volume
• High power consumption
• Not suitable for handy devices

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2. Direct conversion architecture:

• Suited to monolithic integration, due to the lack of image filtering, and is simple
architecture
• Challenge is a 60 GHz local oscillator is required,
• Frequency shift keying (FSK)-modulated signals - low-signal energy at DC.
• Homodyne receivers are signal stage frequency converter, uses the carrier as
transmitter to down convert our signal translating the spectrum to DC.

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Advantages of homodyne receivers
• It has a simple design, hence
reduces the system complexity.
• There is no image problem due to
one step conversion.
• The channel selection is done by
low pass filters. Low pass filters are
on-chip and are active filters.
• It is simple to handle as the mixing
spurs are significantly reduced in
number.
• High-selectivity.

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Disadvantages of homodyne receivers
• DC offset
 Transistor mismatch in the signal path
 LO signal leakage to the antenna because of poor reverse isolation through the
mixer and RF amplifier, which then reflects off the antenna and self-down converts
to DC through the mixer
 A large near-channel interferer leaking into the LO part of the mixer, then self-
down-converting to DC
• A large DC signal will reduce the dynamic range available in the system.
Solution:
• circuit design but cannot be eliminated completely
• Suitable modulation scheme which has low spectral density at DC frequency- FSK over
ASK.
• orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) – lower DC signal energy.
• exploit the characteristics of the 60 GHz

Ref:
• https://relaytraining.com/what-is-dc-offset-ask-chris/
• https://rahsoft.com/2021/09/12/drawbacks-of-direct-conversion-receivers-homodyne-receivers/
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• Addressing the DC offset challenge in direct conversion RF receivers Whitepaper – July 2018
3. Software Radio Architecture:

• Less lossy components

• Hardware components like mixers, filters, amplifiers, modulators/demodulators etc.,
are implemented by means of software in computer or embedded systems
• Require ultra high speed ADC/DAC having 60GHz bandwidth- which are very
expensive at high frequency
• Doesn't need many mm wave components

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4. Six Port architecture : (Transceiver without mixer)
• Proposed as Reflectometer to measure reflection coefficient of device under test ie., -
complex parameter.
• MM wave receivers with modifications
• Introduced as receiver during 1994-1995
• Accurate in measuring the phase of the incoming signal, < 0.01 degrees.
• One port for incoming RF, one for LO and 4 for the detector MM wave diodes
• MM wave diode gives the DC voltage, with the help of which magnitude and phase of
the RF wrt the LO can be determined.

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Reflectometer Operation :
•N ports – port is connected for Device under test (DUT) for the measurement of
• port is connected to LO
• (N-2) ports are connected to the observation point for the RF incoming signal
• Advantage:
• 6 port network is passive network except for MM wave diode (active component)
• No mixers in transceivers (Mixer less receiver technology)
• Only vector addition (LO with incoming RF), no multiplication in time domain

• a represents incident waves and b represents reflected waves. 15

• Using the definition of S parameter, all reflected waves are related to incident waves as
, i=1,2,3,…….n, , are all complex terms
• Assuming that atleast m ports can be described by gamma 𝞒,
, j=1,2,3,…..m, m<N-1
• We need to solve to calculate of DUT

• A and B corresponds to the S parameter of the linear passive network, which can be
measures using vector network analyser.
• Phase and magnitude of the complex quantities are difficult to measure so we measure
the power at the millimeter wave frequency.
• To measure power level we need atleast 4 observation point and hence we go on with 6
port network.

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Architecture:

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MILLIMETER WAVE
CALIBRATION
• There are several millimeter wave design
challenges, such as cross-talk through substrate and
chip interconnect issues.
• To characterize those issues, calibration is a
significant step prior to millimeter wave
measurement.
• There are numerous calibration methods available.
Wafer probes are commonly used together with a
vector network analyzer to measure S-parameters
for millimeter wave devices and antennas.

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 MILLIMETER WAVE
CALIBRATION
• In this section we review three methods for two-
port wafer-probe calibrations:
• SOLT,
• LRM/LRRM, and
• TRL.
• After calibration, the measurement reference plane
is exactly at the probe tip

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• The SOLT (short, open, load, and thru) method is the most
frequently used calibration where users must correctly define
the reference planes and parasitic inductances and
capacitances for the short, open, and thru.
• At higher frequencies, inaccuracies in the parasitic descriptions
greatly impact the accuracy of subsequent measurements.
• After calibration, users should note that the open may not have
perfectly zero return loss. The probe in air will actually have
slightly less loss than the probe in contact with the wafer.
• Thus, a small amount of return gain from the calibrated open
may normally be observed. In SOLT calibration, the placement
of probes can affect the measurement result

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• The LRM (line-reflect-match) method uses a line standard, a
reflect standard, and two identical matched load standards.
• With an LRM calibration, the matched load determines the
reference impedance.
• An advanced method is called LRRM (line-reflect-reflect-
match)
• LRRM is a broadband calibration. The two reflects are
undefined shorts and undefined opens.
• Users need to measure the match on only one of the two
ports. With LRRM, you need these calibration standards: a
line (or thru) standard, two different reflect standards, which
do not require characterization, and a match

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• The TRL (thru-reflect-line) method uses thru, reflect, and
one or more delay lines (see Figure 3.19).
• The TRL method uses the characteristic impedance of the
delay lines to set the reference impedance (Z).
• TRL requires multiple probe spacing and is not suitable for
fixed spacing probes. More details of calibration process can
be found in [33].

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 MILLIMETER WAVE
ANTENNAS
PATH LOSS AND ANTENNA DIRECTIVITY
• For a wireless local area network (LAN), it is
generally assumed that the signal arriving at the
receiver consists of many copies of the information
carrying signal, which have been generated by
scattering and other environmental processes.
• Each path will have a specific delay, and arrival
times will vary according to the dimensions of the
environment.

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• Gain = efficiency x directivity
• PR = AEPT =4pR^2
• G=4pAE/λ^2

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A Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface (RIS) is a
programmable surface structure that can be used to
control the reflection of electromagnetic (EM) waves
by changing the electric and magnetic properties of
the surface.

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• The above optical concepts have been applied to design a Fabry–Perot
cavity (FPC) that encapsulates a dual polarised array with sparse elements
[15, 16] (see Figure 2.5).

• The unusually large distance between array elements allows the design of
the beamforming network on the same plane of the array. This approach
also supports dual polarisation.

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Antenna Beam width
• The radiation pattern of an antenna is essentially the Fourier transform
(linear space to the angle) of its aperture illumination function. In a
radiation pattern cut containing the mainlobe direction, the angle
between the two directions, where the radiation intensity is one-half
the maximum value, is called the half-power beamwidth

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 Maximum Possible Gain-to-Q
• In millimetre wave applications it is desirable to maximize
antenna gain and bandwidth (i.e. to minimize the Q for a
lossless high gain antenna) simultaneously.
• Therefore the optimization of the ratio of the gain-to-Q is
important in antenna design.
• It is clear that the optimisation of the ratio of the gain-to-Q
will yield a greater minimised Q than the minimum possible
Q discussed previously, since it demands the gain to be
maximised at the same time.
• The quality factor Q of an antenna is an important overall
parameter specifying the antenna performance and the
inherent physical limitations of antenna size on the gain.
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Antenna Polarisation

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THANK YOU

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