A Selective RF Low Noise Amplifier

Kin-Keung Lee (sx07kl2@student.lth.se) Yan Lu (sx07yl5@student.lth.se)

Radio project 2009 Department of Electrical and Information Technology, Lund University Supervisor: Gran Jnsson

Report of Radio Project 2009, By K. Lee and Y. Lu

Abstract
Low Noise Amplifier plays a key role in the front-end circuit of RF receiver. The usual requirements are high gain, low noise as well as good input and output matching. In this project, we provide a selective LNA works in FM broadcast band (88MHz 108MHz). It successfully achieves 25dB in-band transducer gain and 18dB mirror frequency rejection.

Table of Contents
Preface ....................................................................................................................................2 1. Specification ....................................................................................................................3 2. Circuit Design .................................................................................................................3 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 System Design .......................................................................................................3 Transistor Design ..................................................................................................3 Amplifier Topology ...............................................................................................4 Filter Design ..........................................................................................................5

2.5 DC Biasing Circuit Design....................................................................................6 2.6 AC Simulation Result ...........................................................................................7 2.7 PCB design ............................................................................................................7 3. Measurement results........................................................................................................8 4. Discussion ..................................................................................................................... 11 5. Conclusion ....................................................................................................................12 Acknowledgements ..............................................................................................................13 Reference..............................................................................................................................13

Report of Radio Project 2009, By K. Lee and Y. Lu

Preface
In analog super-heterodyne receiver, the selective RF amplifier was usually placed in the front-end of the circuit, just after the antenna receiving block. The main task of this stage is to amplifier the received weak radio signals for further processing. Besides that, with an adjustable band-pass filter working together with the local oscillator, the wanted radio frequency tone could be easily converted to a fixed IF. According to the Friis Formula, the front-end stages will provide more contributions to the total system output noise. As a result, the noise figure (NF) of this RF amplifier stage should be kept as low as possible. Meanwhile, the frequency rejection capacity is also quite important for analog super-heterodyne receiver. A normal rejection requirement between signal tone and its mirror frequency part is around 20dB.

Report of Radio Project 2009, By K. Lee and Y. Lu

1.

Specification
Operating frequency: 88 108MHz Noise figure: F Fmin +3dB Gain: G |S21|2 Image rejection 20dB Vcc: 12V Source impedance: 50 Load impedance: 50

2.

Circuit Design

2.1 System Design In order to achieve good mirror frequency rejection performance, we introduced a LC band-pass filter after the amplifier. The system is depicted in Figure 1.

Figure 1. System overview 2.2 Transistor Design BFG520X [1] was chosen in this project because of its good balance between noise and gain performance (see Figure 2) and it was recommended in this course.

Figure 2. Noise and gain performance of BFG520X Because most of the parameters in the datasheet were measured under the condition that Ic
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Report of Radio Project 2009, By K. Lee and Y. Lu

= 20mA and VCE = 6V, we also used these values in our project to get rid of the parameter (except S-parameters) extraction. 2.3 Amplifier Topology Since the gain requirement was not very severe, the single stage common-emitter structure was adapted. The measured S-parameters at 98MHz were: S11 = 0.64859852.7598 S21 = 31.4684143.533 S12 = 0.017570766.135 S22 = 0.77636230.3839 And = 0.586 and K = 0.289, the transistor was conditional stable and matching networks were needed to guarantee the stability. In our design, the output was perfectly matched to the load, so that we could use the input matching network to achieve wanted NF.

Figure 3. Gain, noise, stability circles and reflection coefficients The MATLAB toolbox DESLIB was used to design the amplifier. The gain, noise and stability cycles were plotted and we also used them to calculated required reflection coefficients (see Figure 3). S was selected to 0.44763.4 (i.e. ZS = 50 j50) so that the input matching network could be utilized by a single capacitor (it also provided the DC
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Report of Radio Project 2009, By K. Lee and Y. Lu

coupling function). Because of the perfect matching at the output, an L-network was added to the output and L =out*. The schematic is shown in Figure 4. The values inside the brackets are the real components values. The capacitor at the output is a variable capacitor to provide selective filtering function.

Figure 4. Schematic of the amplifier The simulated transducer gain (with real and calculated values) of the amplifier is shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5. Transducer gain vs. frequency

2.4 Filter Design An LC Band-pass filter was added to filter-out the image signal and, at the same time, minimize the in-band attenuation. The brief specification of the filter was as following: In-band frequency: 88 108MHz In-band attenuation: < 2dB Transition band: 11MHz Stop-band attenuation: > 20dB By using the design procedure in [2], the filter order was calculated to be at least 3.5. Since the matching networks also provided some sort of filtering, we used a third-order
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Report of Radio Project 2009, By K. Lee and Y. Lu

band-pass filter. The schematic of the filter is shown in Figure 6. The transfer function of the filter is shown in Figure 7. With real component values, the in-band attenuation was about 3 dB and the attenuation at 119MHz was about 10dB.

Figure 6. Schematic of the third-order LC band-pass filter

Figure 7. Transfer function of the LC filter

2.5 DC Biasing Circuit Design The DC biasing circuit is depicted in Figure 8, the most important advantage is its insensitivity to temperature and current gain variation [2]. C1 and C2 were 470pF and acted as decoupling capacitor. The RF choke prevented the AC signal disturb DC biasing circuit. The calculation of the component values was simple. First, if we assume and (where = 120 according to the V VCE datasheet). Then, RC = CC = 273 . IC + I D + I B We can further assume VD = 2 VB = 4V , then, RB1 = VCC VD = 1.034 k ID + IB

Report of Radio Project 2009, By K. Lee and Y. Lu

RB 2 =

VD = 2.19k ID and VD VB = 11.98k IB

RB 3 =

The real values of RC, RB1, RB2 and RB are 270, 1k, 2.2k and 12k respectively.

Figure 8. Schematic of DC biasing circuit

2.6 AC Simulation Result After the design of the amplifier and filter were done, an AC simulation was done using Agilent ADS. The result is shown in Figure 9. The maximum gain was 29.5dB and the image rejection was 19.9dB.

Figure 9. AC simulation result 2.7 PCB design The PCB layout is shown in Figure 10. The vias were used to make connections between the top and bottom planes
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Report of Radio Project 2009, By K. Lee and Y. Lu

Figure 10. PCB layout

3.

Measurement results

From the measured S-parameters (see Figure 12) of the whole system, we could find that the transducer gain (S21) had a flat performance around 25dB during the FM radio bandwidth, which was larger than |S21|2 and full filled the specification. The peak frequency was around 99MHz, not far from what we expected. The feedback (S12) was kept as low as -35dB for the entire measured frequency range (50-150MHz). However, there was an unstable region at the input. It may be because L (was set to out* in the design) was too close to the output stable circle. The 3dB bandwidth for this amplifier was from 87MHz to 111MHz, with a peak value of 25dB at 98MHz. The transducer gain was flat during the FM band.

Figure 11. Measured transducer gain

Report of Radio Project 2009, By K. Lee and Y. Lu

Figure 12. Resultant Smith Chart By turning the variable capacitor, we successfully moved the peak frequency to 92MHz, with a 3dB bandwidth form 84 to 102MHz.

Figure 13. Mirror frequency rejection The task of mirror frequency rejection was achieved by a 3rd order Butterworth band-pass filter. It can be seen in Figure 13, an 18dB mirror frequency rejection was achieved the
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Report of Radio Project 2009, By K. Lee and Y. Lu

designed center frequency 98MHz. Actually, there were trade-offs between circuit complexity and performance. If using high Q value components or hiring higher order filter, we could get an even better mirror frequency rejection performance. The 1dB compressing point was measured using VNA. The worst output compression point in-band was 2.4dBm, and that will make an input limit at around -23dBm during this power supply option.

Figure 14. Result of 1dB compression point measurement The 3rd order interception point was measured by Spectrum Analyzer. The trend was also plotted based on the measured results. We can speculate a 3rd order interception point for 98MHz is around +16dBm.

IP3 Measurements
30 20 Outputt Power (dBm) 10 0 -80 -60 -40 -20 -10 0 -20 -30 -40 -50 Input Power (dBm) -60 Fundumental 3-rd Harmonic

Figure 15. Result of IP3 measurement

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Report of Radio Project 2009, By K. Lee and Y. Lu

The noise performance is shown in Figure 16. The blue and red curves represent the gain and the NF of the amplifier respectively. We can find the NF was between 2 to 3dB for the whole bandwidth, which fulfills the specification. The peaks in the noise curve were due to outside-world radio interference. They could be eliminated if the measurement was carried out in a shield room.

Figure 16. Result of noise measurement

4.

Discussion

To perform frequency selection is a challenge in this design. We had to make trade-offs between circuit complexity and performance. Meanwhile, with the mirror frequency rejection filter, implementing the frequency selection by a LC tank became even more difficult. Because the frequency response of band-pass filter strongly affected the turning circuit. Actually, turning the shunt capacitor in the filter was more effective according to the MATLAB simulation, the transfer function is shown in Figure 17, however, such big variable capacitors were not available in our lab. Another trick came from the bias circuit. Because the current gain of the transistor was different to the expected, the value of RB2 was increased to 2k.

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Report of Radio Project 2009, By K. Lee and Y. Lu

Figure 17. Transfer function of the filter under different shunt capacitance Finally, because of the on-board parasitic capacitance, the operating frequency range was different from our calculated value. As a result, we changed the shunt capacitor in the band-pass filter to 180pF (originally 330pF). The final schematic is shown in Figure 18.

Figure 18. Schematic of the whole circuit

5.

Conclusion

We successfully designed a Selective Low Noise RF amplifier in this project. Most of the specifications are met. The 3dB bandwidth of this amplifier covers the whole FM radio frequency range; in-band transducer gain is around 25dB, the mirror frequency rejection is 18dB. In addition, by turning the capacitor, this circuit also shows a frequency selective
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Report of Radio Project 2009, By K. Lee and Y. Lu

characteristic. The measured 1dB compressing point and IP3 point are around normal values and will not be a problem for FM receiver. The future work may include a better band-pass filter which could combine output matching and frequency selection together. That will also save components.

Acknowledgements
We would like to express our great thanks to Gran Jnsson, Dept. of Electrical and Information Technology of Lund University. He gave us many pieces of precious advice during the whole work and always be patient to our mistakes. We also like to thank Lars Hedenstjerna, who made this so beautiful PCB for us. Special thanks to Joakim Ericsson, Wang Jing and Anders Dahlstrm from Sony Ericsson for giving us technical opinions and sharing their industrial experience with us throughout the course.

Reference
[1] BFG520X Product Specification, Website: http://www.nxp.com/acrobat/datasheets/BFG520XR_N_4.pdf L. Sundstrm, G. Jnsson and H. Brjeson, Radio Electronics, 2004

[2]

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