Image-Reject Receivers

M.E. 2nd

Moitreya Adhikary
Semester Dept. E&TC (Microwave)
ID- 210713016
Exam Roll- 161307013
Session 2013-14
IIEST, Shibpur

Contents
Origin of image problem
Why image-reject receivers?
Image-reject architectures
90 phase shift operation
Quadrature mixing operation
Hartley architecture
Image rejection in Hartley architecture
Drawbacks of Hartley receiver
Weaver architecture
Image rejection in Weaver architecture
Advantages of Weaver architecture
Drawbacks of Weaver receiver
Calibration
Conclusion
References

Origin of Image Problem

When centre frequencies of the desired input RF spectra
and another (image) spectra are located symmetrically
about LO and 2IF apart from each other, both are downconverted to IF leading to the Image problem in
heterodyne receivers.
Image-reject filter is employed to alleviate image problem.

Figure1: Problem of image in heterodyne down-conversion

But

Higher IF
Better Image rejection
&
Lower channel selectio

Figure2: Image rejection and channel-selection

trade-off in traditional heterodyne receiver (a)
high IF and (b) low IF

Why Image-Reject
Receivers?
1. "Image-reject" architectures are a class of receivers
that suppress the image without filtering, thereby
avoiding the trade-off between image rejection and
channel selection as in traditional heterodyne and
direct-conversion receivers .
2. Traditional receivers employ an explicit imagereject filters to suppress the image before mixing.
These filters have high power consumption and
require off-chip implementation. Whereas, imagereject receivers are low-power, fully monolithic as
no image-reject filtering is required in them.

Image-Reject Architectures
The basic objective of an image-reject receiver is
to process and suppress the image-tone without
utilizing an explicit, external filter. A useful metric
to quantify the degree of image rejection in a
receiver is the image rejection ratio (IRR), which
is defined by:

Typical wireless standards, such as DCS-1800,

require an IRR of 1000 (60dB). In the ideal case,
the image signal level is equal to zero, and IRR =
.

There are various image reject

receiver architectures possible. The
most fundamental ones of them are:
1. Hartley Architecture
and
2. Weaver Architecture

90 Phase Shift operation

90 phase shifter is an essential component in Hartley
receiver. Let us graphically look at the effect of 90 phase
shift in case of a tone Acos(ct) and a narrowband
modulated signal A(t)cos[ct + (t)].

Thus positive frequency contents are multiplied by -j

and the negative-frequency contents by +j (if c is
positive).
Alternatively in frequency domain,
X90()=X()[ -jsgn()]
where sgn(w) denotes the signum (sign) function. The
shift-by-90 operation is also called the "Hilbert
transform. It can be proved that the Hilbert transform
of the Hilbert transform (i.e., the cascade of two 90
phase shifts) simply negates the original signal.

Quadrature Mixing
Operation
Quadrature mixer is another constituent block of image-reject
receivers. The effect on signal spectra by the operation of
quadrature mixing is shown in Figure3.
Quadrature Mixer
+ve Hilbert Transform
Signal

(a)
Figure3(a): High-side injection
( > )

Signal

-ve Hilbert Transform

Figure3(b): Low-side injection

(LO <C)

Thus to summarize, the quadrature converter

produces at its output a signal and its Hilbert
transform if LO >C and the negative of its
Hilbert transform if LO <C .

Hartley Architecture
The Hartley architecture is the most basic
image-reject architecture where,
The incoming RF signal is mixed with
quadrature outputs of the local oscillator
signal, namely sinLOt and cosLOt, and fed
through a low pass filter.
The signal at node B (Figure4) is then
shifted by 90 degrees by a RC-CR network
and signal at node C is then added to the
signal at node A.

Figure4: Hartley image-reject receiver

LPF section

HPF section

Figure5: Realization of 90 phase shift

Image Rejection in Hartley

Architecture
How image components cancel each other?
The Hilbert transform of the Hilbert transform negates the
signal, this hypothesis forms the foundation for the Hartley
architecture.
In summary, the Hartley architecture first takes the negative
Hilbert transform of the signal and the Hilbert transform of
the image (or vice versa) by means of quadrature mixing,
subsequently takes the Hilbert transform of one of the downconverted outputs, and sums the results. That is, the signal
spectrum is multiplied by [+jsgn()][-jsgn()]=+1, whereas
the image spectrum is multiplied by [-jsgn()][-jsgn()]= -1.

Lowside
injection

Qim,90 has
opposite
polarity of Iim ,
thus cancel
each other out
after
summation but
Isig and Qsig,90 are
additive

(a)

(b)
Figure6: Image and signal spectra (a) after
quadrature down-conversion with low-side
injection and (b) after 90 phase shift

Drawbacks of Hartley
Receiver
There are several drawbacks of Hartley architecture,
1. The principal drawback of the Hartley architecture
stems from its sensitivity to mismatches: the perfect
image cancellation occurs only if the amplitude and
phase of the negative of the image exactly match those
of the image itself.

Phase error

Relative gain error

With various mismatches arising in the LO and signal paths, the IRR typ
falls below roughly 35 dB.

2. Another critical drawback, especially in CMOS technology,

originates from the variation of the absolute values of R1
and C1 (due to process or temperature variation etc.).
For example,
R/ R1 = 20% limits the image rejection to
only 20dB.
3.

Another drawback resulting from the RC-CR sections

manifests itself if the signal translated to the IF has a wide
bandwidth. Since the gains of the high-pass and low pass
sections depart from each other as the frequency departs
from IF = 1/(R1C1) (Figure7), the image rejection may
degrade substantially near the edges of the channel.

Figure7: Frequency response of RC-CR 90 phase shifter

4. The RC-CR section also introduces

attenuation and noise.
5. The voltage adder (usually differential
pairs) at the output of the Hartley
architecture also poses difficulties as its
noise and nonlinearity appear in the
signal path.

Weaver Architecture
To alleviate the mismatch problem associated
with the RC-CR 90 shift network in the Hartley
architecture, the network can be replaced with a
second quadrature mixing stage, which is known
as Weaver architecture.

Figure8: Weaver architecture

Image Rejection in Weaver

Architecture
The signals at different nodes are given by,

Image is removed

No image

: Simplified frequency domain signals at different nodes in Weaver arch

Advantages of Weaver Architecture

1. While employing two more mixers and one more
LO than the Hartley architecture, the Weaver
topology avoids the issues related to RC-CR
networks :
(i) Resistance and capacitance variations, (ii)
degradation of IRR as the frequency departs from
1/(R1C1), (iii) attenuation, and (iv) noise.
2. Also, if the IF mixers are realized in active form,
their outputs are available in the current domain
and can be summed directly.

Drawbacks of Weaver
Receiver
1.

The IRR is still limited by mismatches, typically falling below

40 dB. Since the circuit still depends on the precise
cancellation of the image-tone through subtraction, gain
and phase mismatches between the signal paths are still a
critical problem.

2.

The Weaver architecture must deal with a secondary image

(Figure10) if the second IF is not zero. This effect arises if a
component at 22-in+1 accompanies the RF signal.

3.

The Weaver topology also suffers from mixing spurs in both

down-conversion steps. In particular, the harmonics of the
second LO frequency may down-convert interferers from the
first IF to baseband.

Figure10: Secondary image in Weaver architecture

Calibration
For image-rejection ratios well above 40 dB, the Hartley
or Weaver architectures must incorporate calibration, i.e.,
a method of cancelling the gain and phase mismatches.
A number of calibration techniques have been reported
so far in many literatures.
For example, the Self-Calibrating Architecture introduced
by Montemayor and Razavi, determines the phase and
gain mismatches of a Weaver architecture, and drives
their magnitudes towards zero through use of a negative
feedback loop. Other calibration methods include SignSign Least Mean Square (SS-LMS) calibration, Variable
Delay Cell, Variable Gain Cell etc.

Conclusion
The demand for fully monolithic wireless
receivers has fuelled the development of new
image-reject architectures that eliminate the
need for explicit, off-chip filters. It also proves
to be a low power solution to image rejection.
However, the accuracy of the image-reject
receivers is of great concern as they are
susceptible to mismatches. The technologists
have come up with various calibration
techniques that sufficiently improve the IRR.

References
[1] RF
Microelectronics,
Behzad
Razavi, 2nd
edition, Prentice Hall,
2012
[2] B. Razavi, Architectures and
Circuits for RF CMOS Receivers,
IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits
Conference, pp. 393-400, 1998.
[3] J. Chow, K. Phang, RF IMAGEREJECT RECEIVERS, 2002

Questions?

Thank You