NMK41103

ELECTRONICS AND RF DESIGN

LECTURE 1:
INTRODUCTION TO RF AND WIRELESS TECHNOLOGY
LECTURER:
PM TS. DR. KHAIRUL NAJMY ABDUL RANI
INTRODUCTION
• The field of radio frequency (RF) and microwave
communications has grown rapidly over the past two decades
reaching far into our lives and livelihood.
• Communications and RF devices used for various applications
e.g. information searching, online shopping, global positioning
system (GPS) navigation, weather monitoring, RF identification
(RFID), human/animal/object tracking etc.
• We are in the industrial revolution (IR) 4.0, Internet of Things
(IoT), fifth generation (5G) communications standard, millimeter
wave and big data analytics era, which critically requires
advancement of RF and microwave communications.
• Millimeter wave (also millimeter band) is the band of spectrum
between 30 Gigahertz (GHz) and 300 GHz used for testing 5G
wireless broadband technology.
A WIRELESS WORLD
• High-speed wireless local area network (WLAN) allow
seamless connections among laptops, digital cameras,
camcorders, televisions (TVs), printers, closed-circuit
TVs (CCTVs), microwave ovens, motion sensors, cell
phones as featured in home networking.
• Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and ZigBee connections are examples
of WLAN above.
• Today’s cell phones offer many more functions and
features e.g. multi frequency bands, many
communications mode, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, storage,
digital high-definition (HD) camera, and user-friendly
interface (from the integration of various functionalities
placed/embedded on a single chip).
A WIRELESS WORLD
• A directed-energy weapon (DEW) is a ranged weapon
that damages its target with highly focused energy
without a solid projectile, including lasers, high power
electromagnetics, which includes microwave and
millimeter wave, particle beams, and sound beams.
• Potential applications of this DEW technology include
weapons that target personnel, missiles, vehicles, and
optical devices.
• The High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program
(HAARP) is a University of Alaska Fairbanks program,
which researches the ionosphere — the highest,
ionized part of Earth's atmosphere.
A WIRELESS WORLD
• The most prominent instrument at HAARP is the
Ionospheric Research Instrument (IRI), a high-power
radio frequency transmitter facility operating in the high
frequency (HF) band.
• The integration owes its steady rise to (1) the scaling of
very-large-scale-integration (VLSI) processes,
specifically complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor
(CMOS) technology, and (2) innovations in RF
architectures, circuits, and devices.
• VLSI is the process of creating an integrated circuit (IC)
by combining hundreds of thousands of transistors or
devices into a single chip.
A WIRELESS WORLD
• A Radio Frequency Integrated Circuit (RFIC) is an
electrical integrated circuit operating in a frequency
range suitable for wireless transmission.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFIC#:~:text=A%20radio%2
Dfrequency%20integrated%20circuit,range%20suitable%
20for%20wireless%20transmission.
• RFIC vs RF:
o An RFIC typically consists of amplifiers, filters, mixers,
oscillators, and modulators/demodulators onto a single
chip.
o The RF circuit design is a discrete technology that uses
both low-frequency analog design techniques and
methods used in the design of microwave circuits.
A WIRELESS WORLD
• Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuit (MMIC)
(sometimes pronounced "mimic"), is a type of
integrated circuit (IC) device that operates at
microwave frequencies (300 MHz to 300 GHz).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monolithic_microwave_integr
ated_circuit
A WIRELESS WORLD
• MMIC vs RFIC:
o An RFIC operates at higher frequencies (typically up to
1 GHz).
o MMIC may have the same type of circuitry as an RFIC,
but the frequencies of operation are much higher that
RFICs (typically from 1 GHz to 30 GHz).
o RFICs mainly focus on CMOS and BiCMOS, which are
mainly Si and SiGe technology, respectively.
o MMICs focus on high transit frequency, fT material like
GaAs (fT is the frequency at which the small-signal
current gain of a device falls to unity).
A WIRELESS WORLD
• Below is the trends of in MMIC frequency of oscillation
(https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics11050684)
A WIRELESS WORLD
• Below is the trends of in MMIC market size
(https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/monolithic-
microwave-ic-market-86745565.html)
RF DESIGN CHALLENGE
• The design and implementation of RF circuits and
transceivers remain challenging despite many decades
of work on RF and microwave theory and two decades
of research on RFICs/MMICs due to the three reasons:
(1) As shown in figure below, RF design draws upon a
multitude of disciplines, requiring a good understanding
of fields seemingly irrelevant to ICs.
RF DESIGN CHALLENGE
• (2) RF circuits and transceivers must deal with
numerous trade-offs, summarized in the “RF design
hexagon” of figure shown below, for example to lower
the noise of a front-end amplifier, a greater power or
sacrifice of linearity must be consumed.
RF DESIGN CHALLENGE

• (3) The demand for higher performance, lower cost,

and greater functionality continues to present new
challenges where in the 1990s the RFIC design
endeavored to integrate one transceiver (perhaps
along with the digital baseband processor on a single
chip) but now the RFIC/MMIC design aims to
accommodate multiple transceivers operating in
different frequency bands for different wireless
standards.
THE BIG PICTURE
• The objective of an RF transceiver is to transmit and
receive information or data seamlessly.
• We envision that the transmitter (Tx) processes the
voice or data signal and applies the result to the
antenna as in figure shown below.
• The receiver (Rx) senses the signal picked up by the
antenna and processes it so as to reconstruct the
original voice or data information.
THE BIG PICTURE
• The Tx must drive the antenna with a high power level
through power amplifier (PA) so that the transmitted
signal is strong enough to reach far distances.
• The Rx may sense a small signal and must first amplify
the signal with low noise through the low-noise
amplifier (LNA).
• PA and LNA are active microwave components that
can generate nonlinearity effects as greater power is
applied for a high gain.
THE BIG PICTURE
• In the transceiver shown below, the signal to be
transmitted is first applied to a modulator or
upconverter so its center frequency, fc goes from zero
to say, fc = 2.4 GHz where the result drives the antenna
thru a PA.
• On the Rx, the signal is sensed by a LNA and
subsequently by a downconverter or demodulator also
known as detector.
THE BIG PICTURE
• The upconversion and downconversion paths are
driven by an oscillator controlled by a frequency
synthesizer.
• Oscillator and frequency synthesizer are active
microwave devices that can generate nonlinear effects
known as unwanted spurious frequencies or
harmonics.
THE BIG PICTURE
• Figure below shows the overall generic RF transceiver.
• In some cases, the modulator and upconverter are one
and the same but in some other cases, the modulation
is performed in the digital domain before upconversion.
• Most Rx demodulate and detect the signal digitally,
requiring only a downconverter in the analog domain.