A Wideband RF Frontend Architecture for Software Defined Radio

This paper presents an RF front-end architecture for wideband software defined radio to function in 400 MHz to 3.5 GHz frequency range. The frequency range covers almost all the existing standards (like GSM, UMYS, CDMA, WiFi etc.) as well as future standards (like WiMax which is still to be deployed). Although the 400 MHz-3.5 GHz band is taken, the architecture allows designers to design the front-end for any range of frequencies. In wideband front-ends, devices with high linearity are used to lower the level of intermodulation products. There are different front-end architectures available for catering to wideband operation. However, some of these, particularly the wideband ones suffer with intermodulation problem. This paper presents a partitioning mechanism that uses multiple medium bands to limit the intermodulation problem. The proposed frequency-partitioning scheme makes it possible to suppress intermodulation products further for front-end using devices of given linearity. Thus this helps in achieving better performance along with relaxing the linearity requirement of devices.