2010 International Conference on Electronics and Information Engineering (ICEIE 2010)

Analysis and Measurement of Antenna Passive Intermodulation

Lijia Chen1, Shu Lin2, Jinghui Qiu3, Xin Wang4, Shaowei Fan
School of Electronic and Information Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology P.O. Box 3504, No.2 Yikuang StreetNangang District, Harbin City, P. R. China ljchen@hit.edu.cn1, linshu@hit.edu.cn2, qiujh@hit.edu.cn3, dzwangx@hit.edu.cn4
AbstractThe passive intermodulation (PIM) interference caused by antenna nonlinearity has a serious impact on the performance of the high power multi-frequency communication system, especially when the antenna is shared by the transmitter and the receiver at the same time. Theoretical analysis on the PIM was first discussed in this paper, and then the designed measurement system was introduced. The testing experiment was carried out on the antennas of a special communication system under various conditions. The main factors causing PIM was discussed through analysis on the acquired data. The result also shows that the PIM measurement system serves as a reliable tool to predict whether an antenna has an accepted PIM level in actual communication system or not. (Abstract) Keywords-Antenna; systems (key words) passive intermodulation; measure

II.

THEORETICAL ANALYSIS

The PIM of antennas is commonly considered as the results of the antennas non-linearity under high power working condition. The relation between the output and input of a memoryless and well-behaving nonlinearity system can be approximated by Volterra series

Y = k1 X + k 2 X 2 + k 3 X 3 +
Where,

(1)

X , Y are input and output of the system,

I.

INTRODUCTION

The antenna passive intermodulation by its non-linearity greatly influences the performance of high power multifrequency communication systems, especially when the antenna is shared by transmitter and receiver at the same time. The concern of antenna PIM interference has been focused on satellite communication system historically[1] and also on mobile communication system recently[2]. The reasons that results in antenna PIM can be summarized into two categories: 1) material nonlinearity, such as ferrite or nickel component in the antenna material[3]; 2) contact nonlinearity, such as the metal to metal connection[4]. The research and experiments results show that the PIM of passive components relates to a large amount of parameters[5], so it is very hard to describe it accurately in theory. The actual level of antenna PIM and performance of the system can be obtained by measurement system in simulated or application environment. There are already some general testing equipment in the market, but usually the appropriate testing facilities must be specially made according to the requirement. Theoretical analysis of antenna PIM is given in section II. The PIM measuring system is introduced in section III, which can measure the PIM of other component or system too. The experiment results and analysis of two kinds of antennas were demonstrated in section IV. The conclusion in section V ends this paper.

respectively. k1 , k2 , k3 are coefficients related to the system nonlinearity. There will be many harmonics and PIM products in the output when the system is driven by two monotones with frequency f1 , f 2 . The frequencies of the PIM products will be

f PIM = mf 1 nf 2

Where, m, n are non-negative integers. The order of the PIM product will be

(2)

(3) Generally, the problematical PIM products are those with odd orders, because the even order ones can be filtered out easily for their frequency out of the interested bandwidth. The amplitude of the PIM products decreases as the order increases. Thus the 3rd order PIM has the highest amplitude among all the odd order products and is often the target to be monitored and suppressed. The higher order products would produce serve influence on the performance of systems with high transmitting power and very sensitive receivers as reported in satellite applications[6]. The memory effects can be taken account by introducing time delays into Volterra series, however it can not be used now since the detail of the PIM source is not known[7]. III. PIM MEASUREMENT SYSTEM The antenna nonlinearity can produce forward and backward PIM products. Forward PIM means the portion of PIM products produced are transmitted from the antenna to outside world by EM wave. Backward PIM means the portion of PIM products produced are reflected back by the antenna through the antenna feeder. Figure 1 shows the block diagram of the PIM measurement system. We can see that

N = m+n

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from this figure the two signal sources output monotone signals. Their frequencies can be adjusted as required. Then the power amplifiers amplify the corresponding signals to the desired power level. Then the signals from two channels are combined into one channel after being filtered, which is then sent to a duplexer. The output signal from the duplexer is fed to the antenna to be tested, while the other port is connected to a spectrum analyzer. A filter can be added between the duplexer and the spectrum analyzer. The antenna is put into an anechoic chamber, which is made of EM wave absorbing material inside and resin as its out frame. A power meter monitors the power sent to the antenna.

The two sinusoidal signals by the source generators were set at the required frequency f 1 = 2.4 GHz and f 2 = 2.45 GHz. Though most of the experiments were done under the condition of equal power of the two signals, we set the power level according to the working conditions, the signal with frequency f1 were adjusted to 40dBm and the other one is set at 15dBm. The measured PIM level will directly relate to the real working condition by this way. The backward 3rd order intermodulation is the main concern in this experiment though the measurement system can measure other higher order PIM products.

Figure 1. Block diagram of antenna PIM measurement system

Figure 3. The photo of the antenna

Figure 2 gives the picture of the measurement system. In this figure, (a) is the spectrum analyzer, (b) and (c) are the signal generators, (d) is the power meter, (e) and (f) are power amplifiers, (h) is the duplexer and (i) is one of the filters. This system can not only measure the PIM of antennas, but also can measure that of other components.

The antennas were measured under various conditions: the antenna coaxial cable connector loosed or fastened, which is a known source producing PIM products; a copper/steel rotary joint, required in real application, inserted between the coaxial cable connector, and so on. V. EXPERIMENT RESULTS AND ANALYSIS

Figure 2. PIM measurement system

IV.

ANTENNA DESCRIBTION AND MEASUING CONDITIONS

The antennas under tested are two dipole antennas each with a reflector. The coaxial cable is as the feeder of the dipole. The antennas have the same structure, but different size. Figure 3 shows their structure. The bigger size one is labeled as antenna A, while the smaller size one is labeled as antenna B.

During the experiment, we found that the amplitude of the 3rd order PIM varied with time, even fluttered or shown as wideband noise for some time. These phenomenons reveals that the Volterra series with constant coefficients is not satisfied model under such conditions. It can be concluded that the coefficients may be functions of time and feeding power of the antenna. Thus the model would be very complicated. Another phenomenon in the experiment was the level of the 3rd order PIM varied as the flex coaxial cable connected to the antenna was bent with different degrees. So the cable was kept at a certain angle in order for the consistent of the experiment results. After the system stabilized, multiple time measured data was averaged and was shown in table 1. Note that copper or steel in the condition column of the table means copper or steel rotary joint was added. It is easily seen that the level of 3rd order PIM is high when the coaxial cable was loosely connected or when the steel joint was used. The copper one does not have much impact on the PIM level compared with direct connection. The above results once again verified the conclusion that loose connection or ferrite material can cause strong PIM by many researchers.

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The experiment of the antennas on the actual system shows that the system can work well when the 3rd order PIM level of antenna is under -100dBm. The error rate tends to get higher when the level of 3rd order PIM is larger than this number. Thus we can set this value as a critical threshold to decide whether an antenna is applicable.
TABLE I. 3RD ORDER OF ANTENNA PI M Antenna PIM
Condition Antenna A(dBm) Antenna B(dBm)

experiment under carefully designed conditions with the PIM measurement system may serve as a reliable tool to evaluate whether an antenna works well or not in the communication system. REFERENCES
[1] G.H. Schennum, G. Rosati, Minimizing passive intermodulation product generation in high power satellites, Aerospace Applications Conference, pp. 155-164, 1996. Sami Hienonen, Viatcheslav Golikov, Pertti Vainikainen, and Antti V. Risnen, Near-field scanner for the detection of passive intermodulation sources in base station antennas, IEEE Trans. on Electromagnetic Compatibility, Vol. 46, No. 4, pp. 661-667, Nov. 2004 P. L. Lui and A. D. Rawlins, Passive non-linearities in antenna systems, IEE Colloquium on Passive Intermodulation Products in Antennas and Related Structures, pp. 6/1-6/7, Jun 1989 John Sanford, Passive intermodulation considerations in antenna design, Antennas and Propagation Society International Symposium, Ann Arbor, MI, USA, pp. 1651-1654, Jun. 1993 Y. Patenaude, J. Dallaire, F. Menard, S. Richard, Antenna PIM measurements and associated test facilities, Proceedings of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society International Symposium 2001, vol. 4, Boston, July 813, 2001 Hall, W.J., Gibson, M.H.,Kunes, M.A.,Eskell, J.M. and Connor, G.G. The control of passive intermodulation products in spacecraft antennas, IEE electronics division colloquium on passive intermodulation products and related structures, pp. 2/1-2/6, 1989 S. Hienonen and A.V. Risnen, Effect of the load impedance on passive intermodulation measurements, Electronics Letters, vol. 40, no. 4, pp. 245247, Feb. 2004

[2]

1 2 3 4

Direct connection Copper Loose connection Steel

-120.0 -121.8 -81.9 -90.3

-110.2 -113.8 -99.0 -80.6 [4] [3]

VI.

CONCLUSION

[5]

The PIM by antenna nonlinearity is an important consideration in high power multi-frequency communication systems. The PIM measurement system was introduced and experiments on the antenna 3rd order PIM measurement were carried out in this paper. Theoretically, Volterra series can model a well behaved nonlinear system. The experiments in this paper shows that the coefficients of this model may depend on time and antenna input power level. The present model can not satisfy the application requirement, while the complex model taking account time and power level factors is out of management Thus the

[6]

[7]

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