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IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 3, 2004

A PHEMT Frequency Doubling Active Antenna With BPSK Modulation Capability

L. Cabria, J. A. Garca, Member, IEEE, E. Malaver, and A. Tazn, Member, IEEE
AbstractThis letter presents a novel frequency doubling active antenna, based on a PHEMT device, with BPSK modulation capability. A dedicated nonlinear transistor characterization reveals the existence of two biasing regions, where the second harmonic could be generated with maximum level and phase opposition. Taking advantage of this issue, a low frequency data signal applied to the gate terminal may be used to create a BPSK modulated signal, centered at twice the carrier frequency. An adequate integration of this modulator in a dual-frequency and dual-polarization slot coupled patch, results in a compact and high performance solution. Index TermsActive integrated antennas, conversion gain, frequency doubler, high-electron mobility transistor (HEMT), radio frequency identication (RFID).

printed radiator is described. Finally, measurement results are presented to support the validity of the proposed approach. II. OPTIMUM FET FREQUENCY DOUBLING OPERATION WITH PHASE CONTROL Frequency multipliers have been generally employed for the generation of high-frequency local oscillator signals. Some architectures, based on the use of eld effect transistors (FETs), have been proposed during the last years [6]. They offer a real alternative to diode or varactor solutions, providing conversion gain as well as an improved efciency. A good FET multiplier design mainly relies on the proper selection of the device biasing condition. Different works have dealt with this issue, suggesting some criteria for an optimum operation in terms of the desired output harmonic. That is the case of [7], where the use of a piecewise linear transconductance (PLT) approximation was suggested. This simplied approach lost precision only when describing the working conditions for or small signal exhigh-dc gate to source voltage values citations. Taking into account that FET devices are mildly nonlinear in nature, the inaccuracy of a PLT model in those conditions could be understood. On the other hand, some modeling techniques have been proposed when interested in a precise distortion control [6], [8]. They are based on the experimental extraction of the Taylor series coefcients for the device main nonlinearity, and provide excellent results as long as the device is kept in small-signal regime. In this section, the use of these coefcients will be generalized to accurately predict the harmonic generation in any operating regime of an FET-based circuit. When working on a certain load condition, the power series expansion of the drain to source current nonlinearity with respect to the input voltage Ids(Vin) would result in (1) (1) where and are, respectively, the dc and ac components is the dc component of Ids, while each represents of Vin, the th-degree coefcient in the Taylor series expansion, . In Fig. 1, the experimentally extracted Ids(Vin) and characteristics for a typical PHEMT device are shown. Under a low-level excitation, the device keeps working in the and a few terms neighborhood of the biasing point in (1) are enough to describe the nonlinearity. For a large input signal, however, the device moves to zones quite apart from the quiescent point, and an impractical number of terms would be required in the expansion.

I. INTRODUCTION

N RECENT years, a tremendous interest has appeared on developing compact and low cost transponders for modern commercial wireless systems. That is the case, for instance, of radio frequency identication (RFID) applications, where a tag transponder is forced to answer with a modulated signal once it is interrogated by a reader [1]. Active printed antennas [2] stand as a promising technique in this eld, as they are able of combining the radiating properties of printed antennas with the signal processing capabilities of active devices. A wide variety of solutions may be found in the literature, mainly in the way of simple backscatters with AM [3], SSB [4], or other modulation formats. Other topologies try to avoid interference problems, generating the response signal frequency apart from the interrogation. That is the case of the architecture in [5], where a wideband antenna is integrated with a subharmonic mixer. In this letter, a novel frequency doubling active antenna is proposed. Based on the particular nonlinear behavior of a PHEMT device, as well as on the use of a dual-frequency dual-polarization slot coupled patch, a local data signal may be used to modulate the second harmonic of an interrogating carrier in a BPSK format. In Section II, results of an accurate nonlinear device characterization are employed to prove the possibility of assuring optimum frequency doubling operation with phase control. Then, the integration of the active circuit in an appropriate

Manuscript received September 7, 2004; revised September 28, 2004. This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology (MCyT) under Projects TIC 2000-0401-P4-09 and TIC 2002-04084-C03-03, and by the European Commission through TARGET Network of Excellence. This work is also a result of the collaborating actions as part of Unidad Asociada CSIC(IFA)-University of Cantabria. The work of J. A. Garcia was supported by the Ramn y Cajal Program from MCyT. The authors are with the Department of Communication Engineering, University of Cantabria, 39005 Santander, Spain (e-mail: jangel@ieee.org). Digital Object Identier 10.1109/LAWP.2004.838821

1536-1225/04$20.00 2004 IEEE

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Fig. 1. Ids( ) and ( ) characteristics along a 50

load line for a =2 . typical NE3210s01 PHEMT from NEC, working with

G V

Fig. 2. Calculated second harmonic power evolution with

and Pin.

Obtaining a general closed form expression for a certain frequency component in the current spectrum, as a function of the excitation and the coefcients in (1), is a complex task. When exciting with one tone such expression may be derived. It is widely known that the coefcients of a Chebyshev polynonlinearity may be directly related nomial expansion for a harmonics, if the nonlinear eleto the values of the output [9]. ment is excited with a cosine function, Using their properties [10], the Ids(Vin) Chebyshev coefcients may be described using the coefcients of a similar expansion for any of its higher order derivatives. The phasor representing , can be then expressed the second order harmonic current, in terms of the phasor representing the fundamental component , through the use of the dc, second, of the input voltage, and fourth harmonic of the periodic waveform ( , , ) and (2) This expression was employed together with the extracted characteristic, to study the evolution of the generated value and the second harmonic current in terms of the dc input power, for the aforementioned device. In Fig. 2, the calculated values are shown. It can be observed that two regions with optimum frequency doubling operation exist, each with opposite phase. Doublers are usually biased in region A, slightly below pinch-off, where one-sided waveform clipping occurs. However, a similar power level may also be obtained when applying value (region B). For such a value, the Ids(Vin) a high-dc characteristic has reached saturation (see Fig. 1) and one-sided clipping also appears. Two specic biasing points were selected in those regions, and . The calculated and measured conversion characteristics for a 50 lab model are then shown in Fig. 3. The validity of our approach is conrmed with , a minimum error in the prediction. Around both points would provide the same harmonic power level with
Fig. 3. (a) Conversion gain and (b) phase evolution in function of the input power for the two optimum bias voltages.

phase opposition. It could be expected, that switching the device gate voltage with a low frequency data signal from one point to another, would result in an optimum BPSK modulation of the second harmonic of the excitation frequency. III. ACTIVE ANTENNA DESIGN The BPSK modulating technique, proposed before, was implemented using active antenna concepts. The printed antenna to be employed had to be able to receive an interrogating signal and transmit at double the frequency with a modulated data signal. Radiating structures with dual frequency capability could be found, either using the same or orthogonal polarizations. Taking into account that the input and output ports of the doubler are connected to different device terminals, gate and drain, respectively, the use of two orthogonal polarizations was preferable. A rectangular patch [11], with two ports placed at perpendicular sides, was selected. The two operating frequencies 900 and and 1800 MHz are the resonating frequencies of the orthogonal modes. An aperture coupled topology was

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IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS, VOL. 3, 2004

Fig. 5.

Scheme of transponder test setup.

IV. MEASUREMENT RESULTS In order to characterize the integrated active radiating structure, a specic test setup was implemented in an anechoic chamber, reproducing a sort of RFID architecture (see Fig. 5). A transceiver was employed, able to send the 900-MHz interrogating carrier with a high EIRP, as well as receiving and demodulating the 1800 MHz BPSK response. To obtain the conversion gain of the tag patch, the Friis transmission formula could be applied. However, having this antenna no circuit ports, direct power measurements were impossible to do. In [5] the authors proposed the use of radar cross-section (RCS) measurement techniques for this kind of structures. They have introduced the conversion radar cross-section (CRCS) gure in the case of having not equal incident (interrogation) and scattered (response) frequencies
Fig. 4. Implementation details and schematic of the frequency doubler integrated in a microstrip antenna. Dimensions are in mm.

(3) In (3), the tag is modeled with the gain of the receiving and the transmitting radiating structure , at 900 and 1800 MHz, respectively, together with the conversion gain of the frequency doubling modulator (Gdob) that connects both. , could An isotropic conversion gain, be dened for the active doubling antenna following a similar approach to [13]. It could be calculated from the received response power applying the radar equation (4) and are the gains of the cross polarized antennas employed in the reader, at 900 and 1800 MHz, respectively. is the power in the RF source, determined by the requirement of having certain level range in the input of the doubler to assure an appropriate modulator performance. Using the optimal input power, following (4), and biasing the transistor with the two selected gate voltages, the CRCS patterns were measured. As could be expected, the radiation patterns are quite similar at both biasing points, see Fig. 6. In the broadside direction, a value of 13 dB was obtained . for In order to verify the capability of the transponder antenna, a polar nonreturn-to-zero (NRZ) data signal was also used to bias the gate of the transistor. In this case, the reader demodulator was connected to an oscilloscope to represent the recovered data

preferred, based on previous experience with the integration of this kind of radiator and PHEMT circuit functions [12]. In order to reduce the total size of the structure, it was designed to situate the doubler circuit inside the surface of the patch, as can be observed in Fig. 4. The dimensions were rst selected to assure 50 matching conditions. Some improvement in the conversion gain could be obtained when designing the antenna feeds to assure a better match to the modulator input and output equivalent circuits. The 900 MHz feed matching resulted however in a bandwidth reduction, due to the high reactive nature of the PHEMT input circuit. Regarding the 1800-MHz feed, special attention should be paid to the reactive part of the impedance, as it may reduce the phase shift between the two previously selected states (gate bias voltages). The dimensions in Fig. 4 correspond to the nally selected 50 design. The active circuit and the feed lines were printed on ARLON N25 substrate with a dielectric constant of 3.38 and thickness of 0.787 mm. The patch was built on an auxiliary layer using the same material, and was placed in an inverted position thanks to the use of nonconducting posts (not shown in the gure). In this way, the substrate below the patch is air with the advantages in radiation related to its low permittivity.

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as a residual ASK modulation, not critical in this application. The phase errors were kept below 2 . V. CONCLUSION A novel PHEMT frequency doubling scheme with BPSK modulation capability has been proposed. A dedicated nonlinear device characterization, together with a simple analysis using Chebyshev polynomials, has revealed the existence of two biasing regions, where the second harmonic could be generated with maximum level and phase opposition. A low frequency data signal applied to the gate terminal was used to create a BPSK response modulated signal, through a proper integration of the active circuit in a dual-polarization and dual-frequency patch. A good performance was obtained from the proposed architecture, with a 13-dB isotropic conversion gain. ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Fig. 6. Conversion radar cross-sections of the transponder for V = = 0:16 V ( ), 0 dB reference area is 0:36 V ( ) and V 17 dB cm .

0 0

The second author would like to thank Prof. J. C. Pedro of the University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal, for his valuable comments about the Chebyshev polynomial representation of nonlinear systems. REFERENCES
[1] D. Mawhinney, Microwave tag identication systems, RCA Rev., vol. 44, pp. 589610, Dec. 1983. [2] J. A. Navarro and K. Chang, Integrated Active Antennas and Spatial Power Combining. New York: Wiley, 1996. [3] An automatic vehicle ID system for toll collecting, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA, Tech. Rep. UCRL-TB-113 409, Apr. 1993. [4] T. Ohta, H. Nakano, and M. Tokuda, Compact microwave remote recognition system with newly developed SSB modulation, in Proc. IEEE MTT-S Symp. Dig., 1990, pp. 957960. [5] C. W. Pobanz and T. Itoh, A microwave noncontact identication transponder using subharmonic interrogation, IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech., vol. 43, pp. 16731679, July 1995. [6] S. A. Maas, Nonlinear Microwave and RF Circuits. Norwood, MA: Artech House, 2003. [7] E. OCiardha, S. U. Lidholm, and B. Lyons, Generic-device frequency multiplier analysisA unied approach, IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech., vol. 48, pp. 113411 141, July 2000. [8] J. C. Pedro, J. C. Madaleno, and J. A. Garca, Theoretical basis for extraction of mildly nonlinear behavioral models, Int. J. RF Microwave CAE, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 4053, Jan. 2003. [9] M. Schetzen, Nonlinear system modeling based on the Wiener theory, Proc. IEEE, vol. 69, pp. 15571573, Dec. 1981. [10] R. W. Hamming, Numerical Methods for Scientists and Engineers. New York: Dover, 1986. [11] C. A. Balanis, Antenna Theory: Analysis and Design. New York: Wiley, 1997. [12] L. Cabria, J. A. Garca, A. Tazn, and A. Mediavilla, A novel vector control active patch for beamsteering with linearity enhancement capability, in Proc. IEEE MTT-S Symp. Dig., 2003, pp. 14351438. [13] K. Stephan and T. Itoh, A planar quasioptical subharmonically pumped mixer characterized by isotropic conversion loss, IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech., vol. MTT-32, pp. 97102, Jan. 1984.

Fig. 7. Original (dark line) and demodulated (gray line) data signals.

signal. In Fig. 7, the original and demodulated NRZ data signals are shown. Finally, some considerations about reliability are needed. Working with large excitations, care has to be taken with the excessive gate current, harmful to the long term reliability of the device. A gate current limiting resistor was added to control this issue, also leading to some reduction in the modulated signal sensitivity to variations in the device parameters with time or temperature. Such variations are mainly manifested