An FDD/FD Capable, Single Antenna RF Front End from 800MHz

to 1.2GHz w/ Baseband Harmonic Predistortion

[Placeholder for Author List]
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VDD VDD
Abstract — A highly-integrated dual technology (28nm
130nm
and 130nm SOI) widely tunable software-defined RF Up-
conversion SOI
RF Port
duplexing front-end for FDD, FD, and TDD applications Degeneration TX Out
RX In
is presented. Predistortion and harmonic upconversion are Down-
conversion

used to cancel second and third harmonics generated by PA Monitor

PA PA PA PA PA PA

nonlinearity up to 30 dB. A novel form of non-reciprocal, 28nm

distributed degeneration is used to suppress TX noise that
÷4
desensitizes the RX for full duplex operation. The distributed ATT

degeneration network improves RX noise figure by 7dB RX ÷4

LO
over baseline TX operation for same channel TX-RX. Degeneration Network
TX
The transceiver achieves a 23dBm output power while LO
maintaining more than 30dB of TX-RX isolation over the
0.8-1.2GHz band.

2nd
3rd
Fund

alt
Index Terms — full-duplex, transceiver, distributed, RX BB Monitor: Monitor:
Out RX Port Ant Port
TX-RX isolation, non-reciprocity, software defined radio, TX BB in

degeneration
Fig. 1. System block diagram.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Truly flexible, integrated RF front ends will need to RX while maximizing signal at the antenna port. In FDD
support a variety of duplex scenarios including TDD, FDD, mode transmitter noise is suppressed at the receiver with
and likely single channel full duplex (FD). These scenarios frequency-selective degeneration. While the system as a
must function over a range of RX/TX frequencies and whole is similar to [4], our system offers a number of
spacings, while meeting spectral mask requirements and improvements. First, we take advantage of the speed and
suppressing TX signals, distortion, harmonics, and noise at compactness of 28nm CMOS for LO and mixer circuits
the RX port. Same channel FD is particularly challenging while implementing the high output voltage PAs and
due to self-interference (SI), requiring SI cancellation high-Q passives of the transmission line by splitting the
across the RF, analog and digital domains [1]. Ideally, this design between two chips. A new mode of operation, FD
is accomplished without costly off-chip filters, diplexers or mode, is enabled by the distributed degeneration network.
circulators, and also using a single antenna interface such Higher power low distortion transmission mode is enabled
as in [2] or [3]. by the addition of digital harmonic suppression both for
In this paper we present a dual technology duplexing spectral mask compliance and to avoid saturating the RX.
front-end that supports TDD, FDD, and FD, similar The architecture employs 15 8-phase passive mixers with
to [4] while implementing predistortion to suppress associated circuitry, driven by two LO chains (RX and TX)
not only in-band and adjacent-channel spurious TX to implement the following capabilities:
emissions, but also spurious emissions at harmonics of
the TX frequency. Furthermore, our design combines a A. Mixer Dynamic Range Improvements
programmable complex-weighted distributed transmitter Proper operation of the frequency-selective degeneration
with a shared, non-reciprocal PA degeneration network to requires that degeneration mixers support large RF signal
suppress signal and noise of individual transmitters at the swings that may be present due to the TX signal. As
receiver, including when RX and TX are closely spaced swing on the RF port becomes large, it may drive the
or identical. source terminals to low enough voltage to turn on the
mixers even when their gates are ”off”, degrading passive
II. S YSTEM D ISCUSSION mixer performance. To mitigate this effect, the LO pulse
Fig. 1 shows the block diagram of our distributed generators driving mixer gates were designed to drive the
duplexer. As in [4], complex weighting of baseband TX gates below the DC voltages of the RF and baseband ports
signals before upconversion provides suppression at the while still driving the mixers’ gates to their maximum
 Fig. 3. The upconversion chain. The left side is the 28nm
technology baseband which includes the resistive interpolators,
upconversion mixers, and pre-amplifier. The right side is the
Fig. 2. Harmonic conversion waveforms. 130nm SOI cascoded PAs.

allowable voltage when on. be generated by taking 135° steps and injecting at 3FIF
A similar problem exists in the upconversion mixers, on each baseband port.
where it is desirable to maximize SNR in individual C. RX and TX Monitors
TX chains by maintaining strong TX signals. To further
8-phase down-converting monitor circuits running on
improve in-band swing in the upconversion mixer, the
the TX LO are included at both ends of the distributed
gates were DC coupled through a 2:1 voltage divider
transmitter, providing direct access to the magnitude and
to their respective baseband terminals, such that the
phase of the TX signal at both ports, including 2nd and
gates partially track the baseband inputs, increasing signal
3rd harmonics of the TX(Fig. 1). The TX-end monitor has
handling by about 50% (Fig. 3). Additionally, to minimize
an attenuator to prevent saturation. On-chip monitors allow
noise added by the PA pre-amp, an asymmetric, anti-phase
for quadrature, harmonic weight calculation from baseband
pair of upconversion mixers were used to drive a push-pull
signals without needing any external measurements or
PA driver.
equipment.
B. Harmonic Predistortion D. Distributed Degeneration Network
As shown in Fig. 3, four resistive interpolation blocks While appropriate complex weighting of subtransmitters
were implemented in each TX upconversion chain. The allows rejection of TX signals at the RX port, it does
first of these enables individual magnitude and phase not provide rejection of noise and other perturbations
control for each upconversion chain as in [4]. The in the individual transmit chains. In order to address
second is a similarly configured network that allows for this issue, [4] used frequency-selective PA degeneration,
injection of an additional baseband signal to perform which reduced PA noise but also greatly degraded output
in-band predistortion. The remaining two exploit harmonic power for FT X close to FRX . Ideally sub-TX noise could
conversion modes of the upconversion mixer to inject be asymmetrically suppressed at the two ends of the
second and third harmonic predistortion terms to cancel transmission line similar to the TX signal. We achieve this
the impact of nonlinearity in the PA’s. by connecting the baseband terminals of the degeneration
Harmonic conversion can be achieved in 8-phase mixers mixers to a shared bus. Complex weights are applied to
by changing the effective phase of each baseband terminal each degeneration mixer. Similar to suppression of the
depending on the harmonic to be upconverted. For the TX signal, appropriate selection of these complex weights
second harmonic, shifting the baseband signals by 90° suppresses noise at the receiver.
on each baseband port instead of the 45° used for Complex weighting in the degeneration baseband could
the fundamental will result in operation identical to a be implemented using phase interpolating resistors as in
4-phase mixer with twice the LO frequency as shown in the TX upconversion baseband, however the noise added
Fig. 2. Since PA second harmonic terms will appear at by such resistors would also need to be suppressed. As
2FLO + 2FIF , second harmonic cancellation also requires shown in Fig. 4, complex weights were implemented by
a baseband input at 2FIF . Similarly, third harmonic can simple phase rotation. Switches steer the 8 baseband ports
 No Degeneration
-30

dB
RX TX
-50
800 850 900 950 1000 1050 1100 1150 1200
Individual Degeneration
-25

dB
-35

-45
800 850 900 950 1000 1050 1100 1150 1200
Distributed Degeneration
-20

-25

dB
-30

-35
800 850 900 950 1000 1050 1100 1150 1200
Frequency (MHz)
Fig. 4. Distributed degeneration. The tap weights can be chosen
accordingly to suppress TX noise. Fig. 6. Results of different degeneration modes. Distributed
degeneration prevents TX signal loss while still maintaining RX
suppression.
of each degeneration mixer to the shared bus in 45° steps.
By steering the perturbations of any PA to the others with
phase shifts that match those of the transmission line, TX gain improves to 9.5dB, while NF degradation is
the signal can be made to null at the receive port of the comparable to the individual degeneration case at less
transmission line. than 7dB. In all cases a TX-RX isolation of >30dB is
preserved.
III. M EASUREMENT R ESULTS
B. Distributed Degeneration Measurements
A. Duplex Based Measurements
Fig. 6 shows a comparison between different
Fig. 5 shows the duplexing performance of this system degeneration settings by looking at how signal injected
for an RX frequency of 1GHz. In TDD mode, no PA from one PA travels differently to the antenna and
degeneration is engaged, allowing for the maximum TX receiver ports. In the case of no degeneration, it can
gain of greater than 16dB from 800MHz to 1.2GHz. be seen that the signal travels similarly to both ports
Without degeneration, NF is degraded by over 15dB due (with asymmetries due to reflections off the imperfectly
to TX noise at the RX frequency. Engaging individual matched RX and antenna ports of the transmission line).
PA degeneration reduces TX gain, but improves RX NF The individual degeneration technique from [4] recovers
degradation to only 5dB. For TX-RX spacing greater signal lost by the PA shunting and provides a notch at the
than 50MHz, TX gain stays above 11dB under individual RX frequency that is >13dB lower than the out of band
degeneration, but falls as low as 5dB for sub 50MHz signal level. This notch also effects the TX power to both
spacing. TX gain at spacing under 50MHz can be partially antenna and receiver ports when FRX = FT X with a
recovered using distributed degeneration. In FD mode, 15dB drop in output power seen at the RX frequency. In
the case of distributed degeneration there is still a 12dB
notch at the RX frequency at the RX port but the TX
Noise Figure Transmitter Gain
35 20
power to the antenna port slightly increases.
18
No Degeneration C. Harmonic Predistortion Measurements
30 No Degeneration 16
Individual
Degeneration As shown in Fig. 7, for a fundamental output power of
Noise Figure (dB)

14
Voltage Gain (dB)

25 Distributed 12 up to 18dBm, the second and third harmonic products can

Degeneration
10 be suppressed to below -30dBm by predistortion, providing
Individual
20 Degeneration 8 Distributed as much as 35dB improvement. Eventually the amount
Degeneration
TX off
6 of baseband signal required to effectively null harmonics
15 4
becomes greater than what the upconversion chain can
2
handle, and so harmonic suppression degrades.
10 0
800 1000 1200 800 900 1000 1100 1200
TX Frequency (MHz) TX Frequency (MHz) IV. C ONCLUSION
In this paper, we demonstrated a dual-chip, integrated,
Fig. 5. Duplexing performance across different RX-TX spacing. and software-defined front end capable of supporting TDD,
 TABLE I
C OMPARISON TO THE S TATE OF THE A RT
[2] [5] [1] This Work
Max TX Power 8dBm 10dBm 25dBm 23dBm
Technology 65nm CMOS 65nm CMOS 40nm CMOS 28nm CMOS & 130nm SOI
Number of Antennas 1 2 1* 1
Operation Range 0.61-0.975GHz 0.15-3.5GHz 1.7-2.2GHz 800-1.2GHz
TX/RX Isolation (Analog) 40dB 27dB 55dB 30-45dB
Area 0.94mm2 2mm2 3.5mm2 23.1mm2
*Requires connecting a circulator connecting TX-RX

harmonics.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
[Placeholder due to double blind]
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ANT

Fig. 8. Dual chip die photo. The bottom chip contains the PAs
and the transmission line.

FDD, and FD modes (Fig. 8). FD mode is enabled through

a novel degeneration network. This technique improves
upon transmit gain previously lost by frequency selective
degeneration.
The effect of harmonic terms on the RX has not
been previously addressed in similar duplexers. Here we
present a predistortion scheme that can be used to mitigate
TX non-linearity, preventing RX saturation due to PA