The Beauty of Symmetry: Common-mode rejection filters for high-speed interconnects and balanced microwave circuits

Common-mode rejection filters operating at microwave frequencies have been the subject of intensive research activity in the last decade. These filters are of interest for the suppression of common-mode noise in high-speed digital circuits, where differential signals are widely employed due to the high immunity to noise, electromagnetic interference (EMI) and crosstalk of differential-mode interconnects. These filters can also be used to improve common-mode rejection in microwave filters and circuits dealing with differential signals. Ideally, common-mode stopband filters should be transparent for the differential mode from DC up to very high frequencies (all-pass), should preserve the signal integrity for such mode, and should exhibit the widest and deepest possible rejection band for the common mode in the region of interest. Moreover, these characteristics should be achieved by means of structures with the smallest possible size. In this article, several techniques for the implementation of common-mode suppression filters in planar technology are reviewed. In all the cases, the strategy to simultaneously achieve common-mode suppression and all-pass behavior for the differential mode is based on selective mode-suppression. This selective mode suppression (either the common or the differential mode) in balanced lines is typically (although not exclusively) achieved by symmetrically loading the lines with symmetric resonant elements, opaque for the common-mode and transparent for the differential mode (common-mode suppression), or vice versa (differential-mode suppression).MINECO, Spain-TEC2013-40600-R, TEC2013-41913-PGeneralitat de Catalunya-2014SGR-15

Multipath Polyphase Circuits and their Application to RF Transceivers

Nonlinearity and time-variance in radio frequency (RF) circuits leads to unwanted harmonics and intermodulation products, e.g. in power amplifiers and mixers. This paper reviews a recently proposed multipath polyphase circuit technique which can cancel such harmonics and intermodulation products. This will be illustrated using a power upconverter IC as an example. The upconverter works from DC to 2.4 GHz, and the multipath polyphase technique cleans its spectrum up to the 17th harmonic, keeping unwanted spurious responses more than 40dB below the carrier. The technique can also be useful for other applications, and some possible applications will be discussed

Investigate optimum way of adding wideband capability and recommend a design for modification of one government furnished AM baseband demultiplexer

The hardware design and implementation and test results are described of the accommodation of two wideband channels, 8 kHz DSB/QDSB located at 44 kHz and 16 kHz SSB, lower sideband, located at 104 kHz in a government furnished FDM demultiplexer unit

Low-Complexity Sub-band Digital Predistortion for Spurious Emission Suppression in Noncontiguous Spectrum Access

Noncontiguous transmission schemes combined with high power-efficiency requirements pose big challenges for radio transmitter and power amplifier (PA) design and implementation. Due to the nonlinear nature of the PA, severe unwanted emissions can occur, which can potentially interfere with neighboring channel signals or even desensitize the own receiver in frequency division duplexing (FDD) transceivers. In this article, to suppress such unwanted emissions, a low-complexity sub-band DPD solution, specifically tailored for spectrally noncontiguous transmission schemes in low-cost devices, is proposed. The proposed technique aims at mitigating only the selected spurious intermodulation distortion components at the PA output, hence allowing for substantially reduced processing complexity compared to classical linearization solutions. Furthermore, novel decorrelation based parameter learning solutions are also proposed and formulated, which offer reduced computing complexity in parameter estimation as well as the ability to track time-varying features adaptively. Comprehensive simulation and RF measurement results are provided, using a commercial LTE-Advanced mobile PA, to evaluate and validate the effectiveness of the proposed solution in real world scenarios. The obtained results demonstrate that highly efficient spurious component suppression can be obtained using the proposed solutions

Novel Compact and High Selectivity Dual-band BPF with Wide Stopband

A novel type of compact and high selectivity dual-band bandpass filter (BPF) incorporating a dual-mode defected ground structure resonator (DDGSR) and a dual-mode open-stub loaded stepped impedance resonator (DOLSIR) is proposed in this paper. Utilizing capacitive source-load coupling and the intrinsic characteristics of the two types of dual-mode resonators, compact dual-band BPF with multi transmission zeros near the passband edges as well as a wide stopband which can be used to achieve high selectivity is realized. An experimental dual-band BPF located at 2.4 and 3.2 GHz was designed and fabricated. The validity of the design approach is verified by good agreement between simulated and measurement results

Receiver architecture of the thousand-element array (THEA)

As part of the development of a new international radio-telescope SKA (Square Kilometre Array), an outdoor phasedarray prototype, the THousand Element Array (THEA), is being developed at NFRA. THEA is a phased array with 1024 active elements distributed on a regular grid over a surface of approximately 16 m2. The array is organised into 16 units denoted as tiles. THEA operates in the frequency band from 750 to 1500 MHz.\ud On a tile the signals from 64 antenna elements are converted into two independent RF beams. Two times 16 beams can be made simultaneously with full sensitivity by the real-time digital beam former of the THEA system. At the output of each tile the analog RF signal from a beam is converted into a 2 × 12-bit digital quadrature representation by a receiver system.\ud A double super-heterodyne architecture is used to mix the signal band of interest to an intermediate frequency of 210 MHz. The IF-signal is shifted to baseband by means of a partly digitally implemented I/Q mixer scheme. After a quadrature mixer stage, the I and Q signals are digitised by means of 12 bit A/D converters at 40 MS/s. Implementing a part of the mixing scheme digitally offers the flexibility to use different I/Q architectures, e.g. Hartley and Weaver mixer setups. This way the effect of RFI in different mixing architectures can be analyzed. After the digital processing, the samples are multiplexed, serialised and transported over fibres to the central adaptive digital beam former unit where the signals from all tiles are combined giving 32 beams.\ud This paper focuses on the design choices and the final implementation of the THEA system. In particular, the receiver architecture is addressed. A digital solution is presented, which enables switching between a Hartley and a Weaver based mixer scheme

Compact Wideband Hybrid Filters in Rectangular Waveguide With Enhanced Out-of-Band Response

[EN] This paper describes the design procedure of a compact wideband waveguide filter, based on stepped impedance resonators (SIR) and a combined usage of capacitive and inductive coupling irises, that provides a significant improvement in the out-of-band response of the filter with respect to the state-ofthe- art. In addition to theory, several filter prototypes have been designed and manufactured. A detailed sensitivity analysis has been also carried out. Finally, simulations and measurements are compared, showing very good agreement, thereby fully validating the new filter topology.This work was supported in part by the Ministerio de Economia y Empresa (MINECO) (Spanish Government) through the R&D Project under Grant TEC2016-75934-C4-1-R and in part by Generalitat Valenciana through Santiago Grisolia under Grant GRISOLIA/2017/073.Valencia-Sullca, JF.; Boria Esbert, VE.; Guglielmi, M.; Cogollos, S. (2020). Compact Wideband Hybrid Filters in Rectangular Waveguide With Enhanced Out-of-Band Response. IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques. 68(1):87-101. https://doi.org/10.1109/TMTT.2019.2947911S8710168

Design of a 12 channel fm microwave receiver

The design, fabrication, and performance of elements of a low cost FM microwave satellite ground station receiver is described. It is capable of accepting 12 contiguous color television equivalent bandwidth channels in the 11.72 to 12.2 GHz band. Each channel is 40 MHz wide and incorporates a 4 MHz guard band. The modulation format is wideband FM and the channels are frequency division multiplexed. Twelve independent CATV compatible baseband outputs are provided. The overall system specifications are first discussed, then consideration is given to the receiver subsystems and the signal branching network