Noise Characterization of a microwave

receiver

09/09/2022 L.K.BALAJI VIGNESH, AP/ECE,RIT 1

Radio Receiver Architectures
The receiver is usually the most critical
component of a wireless system, having the
overall purpose of reliably recovering the
desired signal from a wide spectrum of
transmitting sources, interference, and noise. In
this section we will describe some of the critical
requirements for radio receiver design and
summarize some of the most common types of
receiver architectures.

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 A well-designed radio receiver must provide several different
functions:

High gain (∼100 dB) to restore the low power

of the received signal to a level near its original
baseband value
Selectivity, in order to receive the desired signal
while rejecting adjacent channels, image
frequencies, and interference
Down-conversion from the received RF frequency
to a lower IF frequency for processing
Detection of the received analog or digital
information
Isolation from the transmitter to avoid saturation
of the receiver

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Because the typical signal power level from
the receive antenna may be as low as -100
to -120 dBm, the receiver may be required to
provide gain as high as 100 to 120 dB.
This much gain should be spread over the RF,
IF, and baseband stages to avoid instabilities
and possible oscillation; it is generally good
practice to avoid more than about 50–60 dB
of gain at any one frequency band.
The fact that amplifier cost generally
increases with frequency is a further reason to
spread gain over different frequency stages.

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 In principle, selectivity can be obtained by using a
narrow bandpass filter at the RF stage of the receiver,
but the bandwidth and cutoff requirements for such a
filter are usually
impractical to realize at RF frequencies.
 It is more effective to achieve selectivity by down
converting a relatively wide RF bandwidth around the
desired signal, and using a sharp cutoff bandpass filter
at the IF stage to select only the desired frequency
band.
 In addition, many wireless systems use a number of
narrow but closely spaced channels, which must be
selected using a tuned local oscillator, while the IF
passband is fixed. The alternative of
using an extremely narrow band, electronically tunable
RF filter is not practical.
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Tuned radio frequency receiver:
 One of the earliest types of receiving circuits to be
developed was the tuned radio frequency (TRF)
receiver. As shown in Figure, a TRF receiver employs
several stages of RF amplification along with tunable
bandpass filters to provide high gain and selectivity.

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 Alternatively, filtering and amplification may be combined
by using amplifiers with a tunable bandpass response.
 At relatively low broadcast radio frequencies, such filters
and amplifiers have historically been tuned using
mechanically variable capacitors or inductors.
 However, such tuning is problematic because of
the need to tune several stages in parallel, and selectivity is
poor because the passband of such filters is fairly broad.
 In addition, all the gain of the TRF receiver is achieved at
the RF frequency, limiting the amount of gain that can be
obtained before oscillation occurs, and increasing the cost
and complexity of the receiver.
 Because of these drawbacks TRF receivers are seldom
used today, and are an especially bad choice for higher RF
or microwave frequencies.

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Direct conversion receiver:
 The direct conversion receiver, shown in Figure, uses a
mixer and local oscillator to perform frequency down-
conversion with a zero IF frequency. The local oscillator
is set to the same frequency as the desired RF signal,
which is then converted directly to baseband.
 For this reason, the direct conversion receiver is
sometimes called a homodyne receiver. For AM
reception the received baseband signal would not
require any further detection.

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 The direct conversion receiver offers several advantages over the
TRF receiver, as selectivity can be controlled with a simple low-pass
baseband filter, and gain may be spread through the RF and
baseband stages (although it is difficult to obtain stable high gain at
very low frequencies).
 Direct conversion receivers are simpler and less costly than super
heterodyne receivers since there is no IF amplifier, IF bandpass
filter, or IF local oscillator required for final down conversion.
 Another important advantage of direct conversion is that there is no
image frequency, since the mixer difference frequency is effectively
zero, and the sum frequency is twice the LO and easily filtered.
 However, a serious disadvantage is that the LO must have a very
high degree of precision and stability, especially for high RF
frequencies, to avoid drift of the received signal frequency.
 This type of receiver is often used with Doppler radars, where the
exact LO can be obtained from the transmitter, but a number of
newer wireless systems are being designed with direct conversion
receivers.

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Super heterodyne receiver:
 By far the most popular type of receiver in use today is
the super heterodyne circuit, shown in Figure.
 The block diagram is similar to that of the direct
conversion receiver, but the IF frequency is now
nonzero, and is generally selected to be between the RF
frequency and baseband.

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A midrange IF allows the use of sharper cutoff
filters for improved selectivity, and higher IF gain through the
use of an IF amplifier.
 Tuning is conveniently accomplished by varying the
frequency of the local oscillator so that the IF frequency
remains constant.
 The super heterodyne receiver represents the culmination of
over 50 years of receiver development, and is used in the
majority of broadcast radios and televisions, radar systems,
cellular telephone systems, and data communications
systems.
 At microwave and millimeter wave frequencies it is often
necessary to use two stages of down conversion to avoid
problems due to LO stability.
 Such a dual-conversion super heterodyne receiver employs
two local oscillators, two mixers, and two IF frequencies to
achieve down-conversion to baseband.

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Noise Characterization of a Receiver
We can now analyze the noise characteristics of a
complete antenna–transmission line– receiver front end, as
shown in Figure.

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 In this system the total noise power at the output of the
receiver, No, will be due to contributions from the
antenna pattern, the loss in the antenna, the loss in the
transmission line, and the receiver components.
 This noise power will determine the minimum
detectable signal level for the receiver and, for a given
transmitter power, the maximum range of the
communication link.
 The receiver components in Figure, consist of an RF
amplifier with gain GRF and noise temperature TRF, a
mixer with an RF-to-IF conversion loss factor LM and
noise temperature TM, and an IF amplifier with gain GIF
and noise temperature TIF.
 The noise effects of later stages can usually be ignored
since the overall noise figure is dominated by
the characteristics of the first few stages.
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This noise temperature is defined at the antenna terminals
(the input to the transmission line).
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The entire antenna pattern can collect noise power. If the
antenna has a reasonably high gain with relatively low side
lobes, we can assume that all noise power comes via the
main beam, so that the noise temperature of the antenna is
given by

The noise power at the antenna terminals, which is also the

noise power delivered to the transmission line, is

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It may be possible to improve this SNR by various signal
processing techniques. Note that it may appear to be
convenient to use an overall system noise figure to
calculate the degradation in SNR from input to output for
the above system.

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