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Design of Front End of a

RF Receiver
Lioe De Xing1, Suhaidi Shafie1, Izhal Abdul Halin1 and S. S. Jamuar2
1
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Faculty of Engineering,
Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43300 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia
2
Department of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University Of Malaya,
50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
dexing@ieee.org, suhaidi@eng.upm.edu.my, izhal@eng.upm.edu.my

 Controlled Oscillator (VCO). First the LNA takes the weak

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amplified signal is mixed with another signal from local
WHFKQRORJLHV7KH5)IURQWHQGLVJHQHUDOO\GHILQHGDVHYHU\WKLQJ oscillator (LO) which is tunable. The difference frequency
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DUHFHLYHUWK LV³E HWZHHQ´DUHDLQ FOXGHV ILOWHU ORZ QRLVH Frequency. The IF filter is a bandpass filter typically
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I. INTRODUCTION

T HE radio receiver is needed to extract the source of

information from the received modulated signal that has
been corrupted by noise. It is desired that the receiver output Fig. 1. Superheterodyne Receiver Block Diagram
to be a replica of the modulating signal that was present at the configure L and C elements to accept a range or band of
transmitter input [1]. In order to achieve this functionality, frequencies.
two main classes of receivers namely the tuned radio
frequency (TRF) receiver and the superheterodyne receiver The RF front end of the receiver or transceiver of this
are used. project can be used in a variety of applications mainly in
Most receivers employ the superheterodyne receiving portable wireless devices. The main concern in designing this
technique as shown in Fig. 1. The RF front end defines RF front end will be to optimize all the parameters that affect
everything in a receiver between the antenna and the the performance while keeping it small and cheap. The device
intermediate frequency (IF) stage and this includes the Low should be small in size to meet the current demands and cheap
Noise Amplifier (LNA), Mixer and IF filter, and Voltage not only for the cost of production but also cost of operating.
The device should consume minimum power with the
Manuscript received May 22, 2009. This work was supported in part by the intention that battery life can last longer
Department of Electric and Electronics Engineering in Engineering Faculty,
Universiti Putra Malaysia.
Lioe De Xing is undergraduate student of Electric and Electronics II. CIRCUIT DESIGN AND SIMULATION
Engineering, Engineering Faculty, Universiti Putra Malaysia. (e-mail:
dexing@ieee.org)
Dr. Suhaidi B. Shafie is with the Department of Electric and Electronics A. Design of VCO
Engineering, Engineering Faculty, University Putra Malaysia. (e-mail: Cross-coupled LC oscillator is used as local oscillator (LO)
suhaidi@eng.upm.edu.my)
S. S. Jamuar was a professor in the Department of Electric and Electronics
in the system. The LO supplied low LO frequency to down
Engineering, Engineering Faculty, University Putra Malaysia convert the high RF frequency into IF after mixing RF and LO

978-1-4244-5187-6/09/$26.00 ©2009 IEEE

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 C. Design of LNA
LNA is a special type of amplifier with the purpose of
amplifying very weak signal captured by the antenna. The
signal will then be used in the mixer. The parameters that need
to be controlled to optimize the performance of a LNA is the
NF, linearity, third-order intercept point (TOI) and provide
stable 50 input impedance to terminate unknown length of
transmission line.
Scattering parameters which is used to describe the electrical
behavior of linear electrical networks were measured. There
are four types of S-parameter, S11, S12, S21, S22 which are
input return loss, output return loss, gain, and magnitude of
Fig. 2. Output frequency against control voltage the reverse gain respectively. Table 2[5] shows the LNA
specification obtained.
frequencies. In a VCO, the frequency of oscillation can be TABLE 2
LNA SPECIFICATION
controlled by voltage input.
Resonator frequency of LC oscillator is determined by 3DUDPHWHU 6SHFLILFDWLRQV

Frequency 2.4 GHz

where L is the inductance and C is
Noise Figure 2.49 dB
capacitance of varactor. Varactor is a voltage dependent
capacitor. Accumulation varactor is used due to the tuning Gain 12.705 dB
characteristic which is more predictable. The resonant
Linearity, IIP3 13.085 dB
characteristic is very much dependent on the Quality Factor
which is determined by resonant frequency timed the ratio of Power Consumption 13.57 mW
total energy stored and energy dissipation in a cycle. The Q
factor obtained is 233. Amplifier transconductance, Gm is
essential to determine the oscillation of LC oscillator where D. Circuit Compatibility
Gm is the reciprocal of resonator resistance, Req. With Req of The quiescent dc conditions were checked and the dc value
62 Gm is assumed to be 20mS. Figure 2[2] shows the at the output of VCO and LNA, and input of mixer were
variation of control voltage against frequency found to be 946mV, 0V and 0V respectively. LNA and mixer
B. Design of Mixer both have 0V so that they are compatible to each other and
can be connected directly. The deviation of dc output of VCO
All mixer types work on the principle that a large LO RF
drive will cause switching or modulating the incoming RF to is too large compared to the dc input of the mixer. The
the IF [3]. The design of mixer is based on Gilbert cell mixer acceptable range of the deviation is within 100mV.
with modification made. Degeneration resistors have been The solution to this dc bias upset is to insert an appropriate
added on the source terminals of transistors at capacitance as decoupling capacitor. Decoupling capacitor
transconductance stage to increase the linearity of the mixer. was added to both output of the VCO while the gates of the
Conversion gain, noise figure and linearity are the major mixer connecting to VCO output were grounded with a
50ohm resistance. These steps were to make the VCO output
TABLE 1 compatible with the mixer input. Fig. 3 shows the connection
SIMULATION PERFORMANCE OF MIXER
of the decoupling capacitor and 50ohm resistor into the
3DUDPHWHU 5HVXOWV circuit. C4 and C5 are the decoupling capacitor while R8 and
Frequency 2.50 GHz R9 are the resistor connecting to the gate of the mixer.
The value of the capacitor has to be appropriate with the
Noise Figure(ssb) 9.448 dB
intention that the property of the VCO does not change. The
IM3 Intercept Point (Output) 15.764 dBm previous result of VCO simulation shows that control voltage
is inversely proportional to the frequency of the VCO [9].
Conversion gain 9.605 dB
Therefore to determine the value of the capacitance the control
Power Consumption 24.732 mW voltage is set to the minimum value. Control voltage of 0.4V
Source impedance 50
is used instead of 0V because the voltage below 0.4V is not
stable. The VCO frequency obtained from the simulation is
Load impedance 500 the maximum frequency obtainable by using the particular
Voltage supply 1.80 V capacitance value.
Fig. 4 shows the variation of the capacitance value with the
parameters in designing mixer. Table 1[4] shows the frequency output of the VCO. The capacitors 1pF and 2pF can
simulation performance of the mixer. achieve maximum frequency above the VCO frequency

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 Fig. 5. The block diagram for the RF front end made up from the
combination of LNA, mixer, VCO and bandpass filter.

of IF frequency. Control voltage of the VCO was set to be

Fig. 3. Placement of decoupling capacitor into the circuit 1.4277299355V in order to obtain the exact oscillation
frequency of VCO to be exactly 2.25GHz down to Hertz as
shown in Fig. 4. This is only for simulation purpose to obtain
a better result as this control voltage value is impossible to be
applied in an analog circuit.
Fig. 6 also shows the mix table of output carriers,
conversion gain and output frequency in time domain and
frequency domain. The time domain graph shows the
sinusoidal waveform of the output frequency at 250MHz. The
graph in frequency domain again shows that the output
frequency is at 250MHz which is in the second harmindex.
The conversion gain, CG of the circuit is calculated using the
equation shown in the figure and the result obtained is
9.297dB

Fig. 4. Placement of decoupling capacitor into the circuit

needed, which is 2.25GHz. 1pF capacitor was chosen for the

decoupling capacitor taking consideration of the size of
capacitor during fabrication and also control voltage needed to
drive VCO.
E. Circuit Combination
The output of the LNA is connected to the RF input port of
the mixer while the output of the VCO is connected to the LO
input port of the mixer. The Vout after the bandpass filter is
the output of the RF front end which is the intermediate
frequency (IF). The block of the RF front end is shown in Fig.
5. Port LO1 and LO2 of the VCO are connecting with the
same port of LO1 and LO2 of the mixer. Port RF2 of the LNA
is connecting with port RF2 of the mixer. Fig. 6. The conversion gain and output frequency in time domain and
frequency domain.
The single output LNA is connected only to the second RF
input of the mixer while the other RF input of the mixer is F. Noise Figure
grounded. The single output LNA cannot be connected to both
Phase noise is the frequency domain representation of
the RF input of mixer because it means applying a common
rapid, short-term, ransom fluctuations in the phase of a wave,
mode signal to the mixer which is supposed to give a zero
caused by time domain instabilities. The phase noise
output. For the VCO, both the outputs of the VCO are
components spread the power of a signal to adjacent
connected to both the LO inputs of the mixer. The 500 ohm
frequencies. The VCO has a phase noise of -120.8dB. The
load impedance at the end of the bandpass filter was designed
phase noise analysis using the offset frequency at Start
to match to an off-chip component.
frequency of 100 kHz to Stop frequency of 10 MHz.
Harmonic Balance simulation was done to obtain the output

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 Fig. 7 shows the Harmonic Balance simulation for
determining circuit noise. The port source (P_1Tone) for LNA
and the output termination (Term) for IF is needed for noise
figure simulation. Another port source is the OSCwPhNoise
for VCO where this port source integrates the effects of
oscillator phase noise for actual noise figure simulation. The
function of the balun is to convert differential inputs and
output of the mixer to single-ended inputs and output
impedances. 50 ohm is used to match the source impedance to
optimize the power-handling capability of a coaxial cable. The
500 ohm impedance is for matching to an off-chip component.

Fig. 8. Third order intercept point of RF front end simulation

Fig. 7. Noise figure Harmonic Balance simulation

For this nonlinear noise analysis to perform noise

calculation, the Option-Temp component as in Fig. 5 is used
to establish a global simulation temperature of 16.85oC or
290K. This temperature is the standard temperature for noise Fig. 9. The mixing products and harmonics attenuated by the IF bandpass
figure measurement as defined by IEEE definition for noise filter and the two input carriers together with their IM3 products
configuration. The single sideband noise figure (NFssb) and
double sideband noise figure (NFdsb) are 23.362dB and
REFERENCES
20.283dB respectively. This high noise figure is due to phase
[1] Jerry C. Whitaker (2005). The Electronics Handbook, CRC Press, pp.
noise injected by the local oscillator. NFdsb is approximately 1364.
3dB better than NFssb due to both the IF and image carriers [2] Lim Poh Doo, Design of Tunable Oscillator from 2GHz to 3GHz,
are taken into account on the NFssb. Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Faculty of
Engineering, UPM, 2008.
G. Third Order Intercept Point [3] J P Silver, Gilbert Cell Mixer Design Tutorial, RF, RFIC & Microwave
Theory Design: www.rfic.co.uk.
The last part of circuit simulation is the third order intercept [4] Go Ai Mei, Design of Analog Mixer for RF Front End, Department of
point as shown in Fig. 8. Two RF carriers were set to Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, UPM,
fspacing/2 which is 50 kHz above and below RF_freq of 2008.
[5] Bung Sung Hua, Design of 2.4GHz Low Noise Amplifier of the Front-
2.5GHz where fspacing was set to a frequency of 100 kHz. End Radio Frequency Transceiver, Department of Electrical and
The function IP3out was used to calculate the IM3 of the Electronics Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, UPM, 2008.
mixer. Fig. 9 shows the two plots of all mixing products and 

harmonic attenuated by the IF bandpass filter and the two
input carriers together with their IM3 products.

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