RF Circuits and Systems (EEE 6374 Spring 2013) Project Report; UFID#06078296

RF Architecture for 1 Gbps Wireless Link WLAN.

Ankan Roybardhan, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL(USA).
AbstractWireless Local Area Network (WLAN) are an extension of Local Area Network (LAN) which are typically a short ranged data communication network between portable devices and an Access Point (AP). The end users or nodes, communicate to this AP using a Network Adapter analogous to Ethernet Connection. The mobility within transmission range gives added advantage to being connected. Fast growing requirement of Gigabit data rates, call for sophisticated network architecture reform from PHY (MIMO-OFDM) to Transport layer (Wireless TCPs) and high level modulation ensuring more data rate, but it comes inherently with higher Bit Error Rate (BER) and poorer EVM (Error Vector Magnitude-Signal Constellation) at the transmitter. In this project, an RF wireless Link has been designed which ensures to provide peak data rate of 1 Gbps at 5 GHz band. High attenuation is expected since frequency band is high; therefore the distance of transmission is also a major concern. RF system design for transmitter and receiver is presented, to keep EVM within 2% and BER within 10-5 which are the prescribed limits as mentioned in subsequent sections. Index Terms Path Loss, Power Amplifiers, QAM, Signal Constellation, Spectrum.

I. INTRODUCTION

LAN RF module is the most important aspect in a Digital Communication System, since it has a direct impact on the quality of receiver signal. This part is responsible to move the baseband data onto Radio Frequency, in which it is transmitted. Since we operate in a wireless medium, the received signal is typically attenuated and distorted likewise due to Multi-paths caused by reflection and refraction in the environment. High Level modulation schemes such as QPSK, 16/64/256 QAM can be used which pumps more bits per symbol, but these increase the Bit Error Rate (BER) for a given SNR (we denote SNR as in digital domain). The signal constellation gets crowded as we increase the modulation level, thus making it vulnerable to decision errors at the receiver decision device. If the transmitted power is increased so as to increase the probability of the received signal to be more than a threshold SNR, we tend to increase the noise at the transmitted signal too along-with putting more out of band emissions which might cause interference to the adjacent channels. There are several such considerations which are described in the following sections.
IRELESS

At the transmitted, we intend not to saturate the PA (Power Amplifier) and IF Amplifier (Intermediate Frequency). This is the reason for the OIP3 (3rd Order Output Intermodulation Product) to be kept on higher side, especially for the PA, since chances of saturating PA is highest, as the available input power to the PA faces high Gain (at each stage) till it reaches PA. Major concern in designing the entire Wireless Link is the Linearity and Noise Figure. So, the link budget is designed using Syscalc 6.0, where we only calculate the receiver Noise Figure of receiver circuit and check for linearity and path loss through receiver, at the transmitter. An important thing to note is, we have to consider the transmitter and receiver antenna to be Isotropic (0 dB Gain) as per given problem statement. For designing an RF module, we need to consider one frequency band which can provide 1Gbps data rate. The center frequency should be in the 5GHz band. Therefore 256 QAM has been considered as a modulation scheme at the transmitter and a channel bandwidth of 160 MHz as specified in IEEE 802.11ac standard has been used. The RF transmitter and receivers has been designed using Agilent ADS 2012.08 using heterodyne architecture because of several reasons which will be explained throughout the flow of this work. Section II consist a basic overview of the channel allocation and band specification as mentioned in IEEE 802.11ac. Section III presents the transmitter and receiver architecture. This section explains all the modules being used and their specification has been justified with the application point of view. In section IV, Link budget analysis has been shown. This has been implemented using Syscalc 6.0 and the values has been used to manually calculate receiver sensitivity, since it is observed, this software does not provide appropriate Sensitivity. Section V concludes the work and followed by acknowledgement in section VI. II. CHANNEL ALLOCATION AND SPECTRUM SPECIFICATIONS IEEE 802.11ac IEEE 802.11ac has been standardized in the IEEE 802.11 suite, which ensures to give a peak data rate of 3.4 Gbps (single link). The FCC transmit spectrum mask has been shown in fig.. . Essentially it uses MIMO spatial streams to boost up the data rate. The channel allocation is shown in fig.1. FCC UNII spectrum bands are shown in the following figure. 802.11ac takes up the 160MHz band with the given center frequency.

RF Circuits and Systems (EEE 6374 Spring 2013) Project Report; UFID#06078296

Fig.1. IEEE802.11 spectrum allocation from FCC-UNII

For our work, would consider the 160MHz band, and one band would include one channel (Not considerable out-ofband emission). The consideration is quite logical in the sense, since we are not implementing sophisticated MIMO techniques, for getting 1Gbps data rate we need to consider huge bandwidth (160MHz X 8 bits per symbol for 256 QAM=1.2 Gbps). The standards [7][8] shows the maximum transmitted power should not exceed +30 dBm, which is the case we get in our simulation. The transit mask should follow the followingf1=79 MHz f2=81 MHz f3=160 MHz f4=240 MHz

Modulation-256 QAM : 8 bits per symbol. The Intermediate Frequency (IF) is 290 MHz because the IF should be more than the receiver band (160 MHz) and the practical blocks/modules in transmitter are available in market for this IF frequency. Symbol rate is 125 MHz (1 Gbps/8 bits per symbol). Inside the SUC_AMUFA has been shown below

Fig.4. IF-RF Composite Block with Channel Select Filter

Following are the list of the components used in the architectureBlock/Components IF Amplifier Mixer Gain (dB) 21.9 0.8

Noise Figure (dB) 3.7 13.2*

OIP3 (dBm) 34.6 24

F_center

Filter Passband

Fig.2. Transit Spectrum Mask

LO =4.9GHz; and IF = 290 MHz

Center frequency is considered to be 5.25GHz (5170+80 MHz). Channel BW is 160 MHz and so the band 160 MHz as it is a wide band channel and we typically follow 802.11ac standard. In addition to it, since the channel allocation is not contiguous as in fig.1, we would consider one single channel as a whole because a part of the 2nd channel has weather forecast communications.

Bandpass -2.5** 2.5 5.25 GHz 225 MHz Filter1_chebyshev Power Amplifier 32 3.01 42.636 (PA) Duplexer -2.5** 2.5 5.25 GHz 225 MHz Filter_Elliptic*** *NFSSB=NFDSB-3dB=16.2-3 dB. **Gain= - Insertion Loss. *** Elliptical filter gives the optimal response amongst all IIR filter classes. Mixer has conversion Gain only. ConvGain.

III. RF SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE Heterodyne architecture has been considered for this design process because the circuit simplicity. We are essentially operating at 5GHz band, so chances of LO leakage, and DC offset may come up which may produce a zero frequency component and ultimately saturate the high speed ADC, if homodyne system had been implemented. It is better to go for atleast one stage down-conversion to the baseband before we demodulate or put any kind of filtering (higher operating frequency will give high Q filter which is costly). Following are architectures explained for the Wireless transmission systemA) Transmitter RF architecture

The band selected is 225 MHz. This is because of the fact that it is wide band system and it operates on higher frequency band 5GHz, which is not crowded much with ISM equipment or other part 15 equipment, the filter response can be relaxed. This relaxation is used to meet/adjusted to meet the EVM requirement of maximum 2%. B) Receiver RF Architecture.

Fig.5. Receiver RF architecture

The main idea here is, we would emulate the received signal constellation as shown in the above figure. by a 256 QAM system with a given RF Power calculated equal to sensitivity.
Fig.3. Transmitter RF architecture

RF Circuits and Systems (EEE 6374 Spring 2013) Project Report; UFID#06078296

Though the constellation received will be poor at the receiver, but this is only way we can consider having the received signal at the receivers input. The received power which is se t to -52.32 dBm is calculated by the sensitivity equation as explained in section IV. Here we use, Lower Side Band (LSB) receiver circuit, so the LO_frequency is set to 5.54GHz such that different between LO and RF should be IF=290 MHz. The block SDC_AMFA is enlarged as following

**T=290K; KT=-174 dBm/Hz.

2) Maximum transmission range By friis free space equation - ( )

( ) ( ) ( ) ( )

Since, Pt =19dBm from the simulation result as below of the transmitter circuit and the P input for this transmitter is from syscalc Pin-

Fig.6. Receiver RF architecture

Following are the list of the components used in the architectureBlock/Components Duplexer Filter_SAW Low Noise Amplifier Mixer Gain (dB) 21.9 24.43 Noise Figure (dB) 3.7 1.86 OIP3 (dBm) 34.6 23 LO =5.54GHz ; and IF = 290 MHz 225 MHz Fig.7b. Power Amplifier Pin v/s Pout 1st and 3rd order IMP F_center Filter Passband

0.8

16.3*

24

3) PA Modeling

Bandpass -1.3 1.3 290 MHz Filter1_chebyshev IF Amplifier 21.9 3.7 34.6 *Here we do Single Side band. So NF will be 3 dB worse

IV. LINK BUDGET ANALYSIS

Fig. 8. Power Amplifier Pin v/s Pout 1st and 3rd order IMP

Fig. 7a. SysCalc Linearity Check for Transmitter

The point has been shown for the 1dB compression for the 1st and 3rd order Intermodulation Product. It is seen that Interpolated Output Power (P1dB,out dBm), gain (dBm) and Gain Compression (dB) are 30.976, 31.014 and 0.962 respectively. Which means by P1dB,out=P1dB,in+G-0.962, P1dB,in =0.962 dBm where in actual, the input power to PA is (19.87 dBm+2.5(due to filter)-32(gain of PA)=-9.63 dBm), so the PA will not saturate with this input Power to the PA. 4) Signal Constellation Transmitter

1) BER is given as 10-5 ; Eb/N0 =22.4dB

Fig.9. Transmitter EVM

( )

RF Circuits and Systems (EEE 6374 Spring 2013) Project Report; UFID#06078296

5) Signal Constellation-Receiver

selection. That has been satisfied by the filters found in market. VI. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This project is a partial requirement towards completion of the course, EEE6374 RF Circuits and Systems. We thank Dr. Jenshan Lin and the Mr. Taesong Hwang (TA) for guiding us with every little details about the work and providing valuable inputs throughout the time of working on this project. VII. REFERENCES
[1] Shairi, N.A.; Rahman, T.A.; Abd Aziz, M.Z.A., "RF transmitter system design for Wireless Local Area Network bridge at 5725 to 5825 MHz," Computer and Communication Engineering, 2008. ICCCE 2008. International Conference on , vol., no., pp.109,112, 13-15 May 2008. [2] Zhongming Shi; Rofougaran, R., "A single-chip and multi-mode 2.4/5GHz RF transceiver for IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN," Microwave and Millimeter Wave Technology, 2002. Proceedings. ICMMT 2002. 2002 3rd International Conference on , vol., no., pp.229,232, 17-19 Aug. 2002. [3] Shairi, N.A.; Ibrahim, I.M.; Rahman, T.A., "Third order intermodulation distortion effect on the constellation error in RF transmitter of IEEE 802.11a WLAN system," Industrial Electronics and Applications (ISIEA), 2011 IEEE Symposium on , vol., no., pp.223,226, 25-28 Sept. 2011. [4] Office of Engineering and Technology - Federal Communications Commission, UNDERSTANDING THE FCC REGULATIONS FOR LOWPOWER, NON-LICENSED TRANSMITTERS, USA. [5] Pozer, D.M., Microwave and RF Design of Wireless Systems, John Willey & Sons, Inc. NY. [6] Razavi, B., RF Microelectronics, Prentice Hall Communications and Emerging Technologies Series, NJ. [7]http://www.mhprofessional.com/downloads/products/0071701524/0071701 524_chap02.pdf-WLAN standard [8]http://www.litepoint.com/whitepaper/80211ac_Whitepaper.pdf-IEEE 802.11ac standard white paper. [9] Jenshan Lin, Lecture notes, Spring 2013.

Fig.10. Receiver Signal Constellation

The constellation is degraded due to free space propagation losses. This is intuitive, since for such a higher QAM system, the constellation should have degraded this much. Efficient Coding schemes and MIMO techniques are applied at PHY to mitigate this effect. 6) Spectrum at receiver

VIII. COMPONENT LISTING

Fig.11. Receiver Signal Spectrum

Component

Make

Power Consumption Parameters

0.725 W 0.161W 2.01W 0.3W 2.01W 2.01W 0.302W

Pricing

The receiver spectrum is shown as above. The out of band emissions are pretty low around the center frequency. V. CONCLUSION The prime concern in design of this RF WLAN link was to observe the Non Linearity at different points. The output of the transmitter is 19.87 dBm which will push the range of transmission to a maximum of around 21 mtrs. We had detailed modeling of the Power Amplifier since its 3rd order Non Linearity is important as the available input power is high enough to drive it saturation. At the receiver end, the LNA should have the low Noise Figure (being the 1 st stage) i.e. 1.5 dB which is good enough. The filter BW is not so strict for the fact that spectrum is not much crowded as traditional 2.45 GHz band. The EVM is perfectly satisfied with 1.8% and the sensitivity is around -53dBm. The part 15 FCC rules has been satisfied by that fact that out of band emission is lower than 20dB @ 81MHz from center frequency. The constellation at the receiver has degraded because of considerable SNR degradation when passing through the medium. The Insertion Loss and Stop band attenuation are the key factors for filter

Tx_Rx_IF Amplifier Tx_Mixer Tx_Chebyshev Tx_Power Amplifier Tx_Duplex_filt er. Rx_Duplex_filt er. Low Noise Amplifier (LNA) Tx_Mixer Rx_BPF_Cheby shev Filter

MiniCircuitsCMA 63+ Analog Devices ADL5801 MiniCircuitsVBF 7200+ Skyworks SE5003L-1* MiniCircuitsVBF 7200+ MiniCircuitsVBF 7200+ SkyworksSKY65404_31_2 01512I* Analog Devices ADL5801 MiniCircuitsRBP-253+

$ 4.95 $ 6.18 $34.95 $11.00 $34.95 $34.95

0.161W

$6.18 $15.95

*The component has been specially designed for 802.11ac radios.