Application Note Design, Optimization and Production of an Ultra-Wideband (UWB) Receiver Overview This application note describes the design process for an ultra-wideband (UWB) receiver, including both the RF circuit design and the printed circuit board (PCB) layout for manufacturing. The aim of this case history of an actual product development is to provide some guidance and inspiration for readers own design assignments. Project Description For this actual design of a complete RF UWB receiver (Figure 1), the total time from start to prototype construction was several months. Beginning with the high-level design and system performance optimization, the design then progressed to a complete schematic, RF layout, and electromagnetic (EM) design optimization. The layout was implemented on a PCB with six metal layers. Rigorous design efforts and careful attention to layout details resulted in a prototype that successfully met performance requirements on the first pass. The UWB receiver had a target sensitivity of -92 dbm with pulses occupying >1 GHz bandwidth. The first task was to develop the RF receiver from antenna to digital interface. The goal was to complete the entire design using NI AWR Design Environment software, taking advantage of the efficiency of a single development platform. Figure 1: Final RF UWB receiver product from Coversistemi. ni.com/awr
Antenna and Receiver Architecture The receiver includes an antenna previously designed by the company for UWB radar devices. The antenna uses a non-standard elliptical radiator with floating reflector for gain enhancement. Figure 2 shows the antenna and its radiation pattern. Figure 3 is the input reflected power (S11) performance over the intended frequency range. Figure 2: UWB antenna and its radiation patterns. Figure 3: S11 plot for the antenna over the UWB frequency range. An I/Q direct conversion architecture was selected, with analytical signal extraction at baseband. Figure 4 shows the overall functional diagram, from antenna and input bandpass filter, through a low-noise amplifier (LNA), to a pair of mixers fed with quadrature LO signals, to baseband lowpass filters, amplifiers, and squaring detectors, then finally summed at the output for delivery to the next stage: analog-to-digital (A/D) conversion and digital processing. Figure 4: Overall function diagram of direct conversion receiver architecture.
The LNA design was executed using AWR EM simulation, including the bias tee that provides DC power to the active devices. The core amplifier and RF filter were co-designed to simultaneously obtain the desired out-of-band rejection, gain, and noise figure performance. Figure 5 shows nonlinear performance using real data as input. Figure 5: LNA nonlinear performances evaluation with real data as input.. Figure 6 shows the preliminary bias-tee design and optimization results, with the layout on the left and the isolation performance plot on the right. A full layout EM validation was performed to confirm the performance. The results are shown in Figure 7. Figure 6: Preliminary bias-tee layout and isolation plot. Figure 7: Gain vs. frequency results of the full layout EM simulation compared to the circuit simulation.
The I/Q downconverting stage uses a broadband commercial mixer. Performance was tailored by means of distributed input filtering. AXIEM EM simulation of the I/Q downconverter is shown in Figure 8. a) b) c) Figure 8: I/Q downconverter performance: a) RF and LO port S-parameters, b) conversion gain, and c) LO feedthrough. Full-Chain Simulation and Validation The entire signal chain was simulated at the post-layout level, with each block using its AXIEM model (hierarchical extraction). Simulation used two different domains (RF/ZIF) with a huge number of harmonics, as required for a UWB signal. The multi-rate harmonic balance (MRHB) engine of Microwave Office software was used to perform the simulation of the entire receiver up to the A/D converter. Real data from transmitted signal measurements were imported for the MRHB simulations. Figure 9 presents the results nonlinear signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) evaluation versus input power. Figure 9: Nonlinear SNR evaluation vs. input power.
Formal Check Through to Production The entire board (six metal layers) was designed within Microwave Office. A sequence of pre-production steps was followed: Design Rule Check DRC was easy with the declaration of layout rules based upon PCB supplier specifications for the following (see Figure 10): Metal min size/spacing Via aspect ratio/covering Minimum solder mask opening in presence of leads Solder paste Figure 10: DRC checking menu selection in Microwave Office. Layout vs. Schematic LVS analysis assured that there was connectivity on each layer, layer connections by vias, and device connections to the top/bottom layers by means of solder mask openings (Figure 11). Figure 11: LVS menu selection and result screen in Microwave Office.
Production Files: Gerber/Drill Gerber and drill e xcellon files were extracted and sent for board production. Bill of Materials (BOM) and Pick and Place Manual generation of the BOM as well as the pick-and-place data can be an extremely time-consuming and risky proposition, especially on dense PCBs with many components. In this case, the solution was to use the scripting editor in Microwave Office, which for nonstandard operations like this made sense. It has syntax highlighting, automatic completion, and requires little knowledge of Visual Basic (classes and variables). Documentation of the class Figure 12: Flow chart for pick & place scripting. hierarchy is user-friendly, and there is an option for Excel spreadsheet creation. The programming flow chart for pick and place is shown in Figure 12. Hint In order to avoid errors when designing your own cell view representing a device, draw it with the same rotation specified by the supplier in the tape & reel specifications The pick-and-place output file includes the data listed below and is shown in the table of Table 1: RefDes (unique string ID of the device) Component ID (from NI AWR Vendor Libraries) for material acquisition Library X-coordinate from board origin Y-coordinate from board origin Table 1: Pick & place output file example. Rotation (degrees) Mounting layer Conclusion A complete UWB RF receiver (antenna to A/D input) flow has been described using Microwave Office software for all phases of the design. Circuit design and layout, EM simulation (AXIEM), harmonic balance simulation, and PCB design were all done using NI AWR Design Environment tools. While BOM and pick-and-place specifications are not included in the toolset by default, custom programming for these operations was done via the Microwave Office scripting editor. This allowed these manufacturing setup capabilities to be included in the same design platform, the result being that the development process from concept to prototype was achieved with first pass success. AWR Group, NI would like to thank Coversistemi for their contribution to this application note. 2016 National Instruments. All rights reserved. AWR, AXIEM, Microwave Office, National Instruments, NI, and ni.com are trademarks of National Instruments. Other product and company names listed are trademarks or trade names of their respective companies. AN-M-UWB-2016.1.14