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Relating Cascaded Noise Figures to Real-world Performance

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time & frequency

Relating Cascaded Noise Figures to Realworld Performance


When the devices performance fails to meet specification, it isnt always the components. Sometimes its the math
By Rulon VanDyke
common issue that often arises is, after the design and build of a receiver, it is determined that the sensitivity is worse than of the calculated model. A significant amount of time can be spent determining the exact problem and why the cascaded noise figure equations did not accurately represent the predicted sensitivity. The solution usually involves issuing new component requirements (lower LNA noise figure or more gain) and/or changing the front-end

tion of a dB can make a huge difference in the link budget and can play a big part in winning or losing contracts. Many times decreasing the noise figure of a receiver may be much cheaper than increasing the power of the transmitter. Predicting accurate noise figure then becomes of paramount importance.

Receiver Sensitivity Defined


The sensitivity of a receiver is equivalent to the thermal noise at the input plus the noise figure and minimum acceptable signal-to-noise ratio (see figure 1 the vertical axis is dBm/Hz). The receiver designer typically only has control over the noise figure since the receiver operating temperature determines the thermal noise and the type of modulation usually determines the minimum acceptable signalto-noise ratio. The cascaded noise figure is defined by the following equation: =F +
1

cascade

F 1 F 1 F 1 + + ... + G GG G G ...G 1
2 3 n 1 1 2 1 2 n

Figure 1. Noise and receiver sensitivity

Where the power gains and noise factors are the linear, and not the logarithmic, quantities. Note that the cascaded noise figure is solely based on the individual noise figure and gain of each stage. The cascaded noise figure equations work well until the mixer enters the equation. Mixers equally convert the in-channel noise as well as the image noise into the mixer output. It is often assumed that the image noise is accounted for in the cascaded noise figure equation it isnt. The cascaded noise figure equations assume that noise contribution due to the image is zero. In many cases, in receiver design, this can be a dangerous assumption that will only lead to a new design pass or failing sensitivity requirements. When software design tools or spreadsheets do not account for image noise power across the channel bandwidth, then simulation results only show best-case noise figure instead of the worst case scenario. Worst-case noise figure is much more important than best-case noise figure since typical receiver requirements guarantee sensitivity better than a specified level. Worst-case noise figure is necessary in determining worst-case sensitivity. As a matter of fact, if there is no image noise rejection at all, the true cascaded noise figure will be 3 dB higher than indicated through the cascaded noise figure equations. This would mean double the transmitter output power to compensate for this simple oversight.

architecture (removing loss in the front-end). Noise figure is a critical parameter when designing receivers. In critical situations a frac-

Image and Noise Rejection Issues


Image signal rejection and image noise rejection can mean two different things. For exam-

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Figure 2. A typical receiver front-end with no image noise rejection after the LNA

ple, a typical receiver may start out with a front-end receiver band filter followed by an low-noise amplifier (LNA) and then a mixer (see figure 2). The front-end filter would probably be designed to adequately handle

of the receiver. Unfortunately, these LNAs will also create broadband noise which will appear at the image frequency and this noise power will be directly converted into the IF band. This has the effect of reducing the

mixer(s). Furthermore, it would be required to integrate the image noise across the channel bandwidth at the image frequency. The time required to accurately account for these complications typically prevent the designer from incorporating them into their calculations especially in todays world where design intervals are shrinking. Likewise, examining true noise figure across receiver in-band frequencies is typically not incorporated into calculations for the same reasons. This approach lends itself to the wait-and-see what the actual sensitivity is in the lab. This wait-and-see approach can be avoided by using software tools designed to automatically account for these complications. There are a number o software tools that can be used for this. Some of these tools are specifically designed to verify RF performance and optimize RF architectures, solving problems like image noise, gain line-ups affected by voltage standing-wave ratio (VSWR), sneak paths, etc.

A Simple Model
Figure 3 - Channel noise and image channel power without an image noise filter

input image signal rejection. Typical LNAs may have very high gain to set the noise figure for the rest

overall receiver sensitivity. To correct this problem a filter must be placed at the LNAs output to reject the image noise. This is a critical issue that is often overlooked and presents significant problems if not addressed early on. An obvious solution to this pr obl em i s t o account for the i m age noi s e at the beginning of the design cycle. This is much easier said than done since this requires the designer to know the frequency characteristics of all devices Figure 4. The cascaded noise figure of the image noise versus the cascaded p r e c e d i n g the noise figure equations

Reference the example of a basic receiver front end consisting of a receive filter, LNA, and mixer and an IF chain consisting of a IF filter and amplifier (see figure 2). The receiver filter has a nominal insertion loss of 1 dB; the LNA has a noise figure of 2.5 dB with a gain of 30 dB. We will place a disabled image noise rejection filter (to be used later) between the LNA and mixer that has an ideal insertion loss of 0 dB. The mixer is a passive mixer with a conversion loss of 8.0 dB. The IF filter is centered at 140 MHz and has an insertion loss of 5 dB. The IF amplifier has a gain of 20 dB and a 4 dB noise figure. Cascaded noise figure calculations show that the noise figure for this receive system is 3.62 dB. However, after examining this lineup and accounting for image noise in using the software, it is see that the actual noise figure is 5.18 dB. This is over 1.5 dB above the predicted value. The table in figure 3 shows the Node sequence along with measurements of channel frequency (CF), channel power (CP), channel noise power (CNP), cascaded noise figure (CNF),

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Figure 5. A typical receiver front-end with image noise rejection after the LNA

Figure 6. Channel noise and image channel power with an image noise filter

image frequency (IMGF), and image channel power (IMGP) along the input to output path. The channel bandwidth used for these measurements is 1 Hz, since continuous wave (CW) signals are used in this example. The true cascaded noise figure and the predicted noise figure is also

shown on the level diagram in figure 4. Image noise can easily be detected on a level diagram since the noise figure will jump up at the mixer output. Next, integrating the simple 1 st order bandpass filter (image noise rejection filter) after the LNA will provide about 20 dB of rejection at

the image frequency of 1860 MHz (see figure 5). After re-running the simulation a noise figure of 3.66 dB, which is 0.04 dB higher than the cascaded noise figure equations predict, is achieved. This is because there is still a small amount of image noise contribution and the VSWR effects of the filters have also been accounted for. Figure 6 shows a table of the results of the lineup with image noi s e r ej ec t i on fi l t er enabled. Comparing CNP and IMGP measurements, the designer can quickly see the amount of image noise rejection needed to minimize the impact of image noise. This can be seen by comparing the results shown in figure 3 with those of figure 6. Since the software used for this particular scenario is a channelbased tool that integrates power spectral density over a channel bandwidth, measurements show power within a channel along a userdefined path. The CNP measurement integrates the absolute power of all of the noise within the channel bandwidth at the channel frequency. The IMGP measurement integrates the absolute power of all of the energy within the channel bandwidth at the image frequency. Obviously, the IMGF will become the CF at the output of the mixer. Such image measurements help the RF designer determine the amount of image rejection needed in the design eliminating the guesswork and waitand-see sensitivity approach.

Conclusion
The spectral domain engine used in this scenario in gives RF designers the ability to view, analyze, and optimize designs in a manner to optimize time and resources. Modern software now includes compensation for traditionally troublesome anomalies that often dont show up until the receive had been built and tested. With such tools, broadband noise, for example, can automatically be folded into the output of the mixer. Such cascaded NF measurements will automatically take into consideration this folded noise (such as image noise). Furthermore, the cascaded noise figure measurement can easily be swept over frequency and the results displayed on a level diagram

Figure 7. The cascaded noise figure versus frequency

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or in a table (see figure 7) for a frequency channel sweep on a level diagram and figure 8 for a receiver front-end Monte Carlo analysis. F ur t her m or e, i m pedance mismatches are automatically accounted giving the RF designer a complete picture of the design before committing to layout. Design trade-offs and exact performance requirements can be determined and optimized for each stage and different RF architectures can be compared. This eliminates the over simplification typically created in other RF design tools, spreadsheets, and math packages. The wait-and-see approach to receiver sensitivity can be eliminated.

Figure 8. A Monte Carlo analysis of the receiver

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About the author


Rulon VanDyke is the lead engineer in systems simulation at Eagleware Corp. (www.eagleware.com). He received both a BS degree and MS degree in electrical engineering from Brigham Young University in 1990. For 10 years, he designed first-, second-, and third-generation digital cellular transceivers and base stations for AT&T Bell Labs and Lucent Technologies. In 2001, he joined Eagleware to develop Spectrasys, which is the software used in this article. He may be reached at rulon@eagleware.com, or at (678) 291-0995 voice or (678) 291-0971 fax.

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Product specications and descriptions in this document subject to change without notice. Agilent Technologies, Inc. 2008 Printed in USA, Janurary 01, 2003 5989-9282EN

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