10.08.2013 Views

III. Gm-C Filtering - Epublications - Université de Limoges

III. Gm-C Filtering - Epublications - Université de Limoges

III. Gm-C Filtering - Epublications - Université de Limoges

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

Create successful ePaper yourself

Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.

As said before, when mixing the RF signal with the LO frequency, the harmonic<br />

frequencies of the LO are also downconverted to IF. Hence, a certain rejection of these<br />

harmonics is required. To relax the constraints over the mixer stage, the RF filter rejects all<br />

harmonic frequencies by a certain amout. It allows the relaxation of the constraints on the<br />

harmonic-rejection mixer located after the filter.<br />

Even though a low-pass filter would be enough to reject harmonics, the bandpass<br />

character of the filter has two main assets. First, a bandpass filter is able to protect the mixer<br />

from strong unwanted interferers. In<strong>de</strong>ed, in case of the reception of a weak wanted signal,<br />

the RF filter has to reject all unwanted signals as high as possible, on both si<strong>de</strong>s of the central<br />

frequency. For this matter, the RF filter would have been even more efficient if it was<br />

connected directly at the antenna, also protecting the LNA. However, the frequency tuning<br />

while keeping a good matching to the antenna appears difficult. Besi<strong>de</strong>s, from Friis’ formula,<br />

it would require a very low noise filtering, which is hard to achieve.<br />

The second asset of a bandpass RF filtering is the rejection of adjacent channels. This<br />

is a crucial feature to meet international norms such as ATSC A/74 or the Nordig Unified.<br />

These norms require a certain adjacent channels rejections from the front-end part of the<br />

tuner, called protection ratios. These may be seen on Figure 29, which summarizes the wanted<br />

protection ratios according to various standards [I.3, I.7 and I.8] as a function of the position<br />

of the unwanted channel. An RF selectivity stage allows reaching these adjacent channels<br />

rejection specifications.<br />

Figure 29. Protection ratios for different standards<br />

- 26 -

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!