Electronically tunable antenna pair and novel RF front-end architecture for software-defined radios

Sung Hoon Oh, James Aberle, Sreeraman Anantharaman, Kentaro Arai, Man Liang Chong, Seng Chee Koay

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

11 Scopus citations

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel RF front-end architecture for soft ware-defined radios (SDRs) based on an electronically tunable antenna pair controlled by an antenna control unit (ACU) consisting of field effect transistor (FET) switches and a field programmable gate array (FPGA). The fundamental gain-bandwidth limitations of electrically small antennas prevent a small antenna from having high efficiency and wide bandwidth simultaneously. In the age of miniaturization, especially in the wireless communication industries, a promising solution to this limitation is to introduce reconfigurable antennas that can be tuned electronically to different frequency bands with both high efficiency and narrow instantaneous bandwidth. This reconfigurable antenna technology not only simplifies current RF front-end architectures, but can be reprogrammed on demand to transmit and receive RF signals in any desired frequency band. This novel RF front-end architecture implemented by a reconfigurable antenna pair can help realize SDRs.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)2701-2707
Number of pages7
JournalEurasip Journal on Applied Signal Processing
Volume2005
Issue number16
DOIs
StatePublished - 2005

Keywords

  • ACU
  • Antenna
  • FET
  • FPGA
  • RF front end
  • SDRs

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Signal Processing
  • Hardware and Architecture
  • Electrical and Electronic Engineering

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