EEE3033 Flipped Class Notes and Guidance Week 9

Now that we have learned about how to build low noise amplifiers with low noise figures, this
flipped class will cover RF receivers and low noise amplifiers to understand how they need to be
configured to receive as high a signal to noise ratio as possible. You will go through all the
mathematical steps to understand this. Finally this class will finish with understanding RF receiver
architecture known as the superhetreodyne receiver.

Task 1 Concepts of sky noise

For ground stations receiving from satellite or also terrestrial communication systems they will be
subject to sky noise sources and this task aims to show how they are sourced. Watch the video of
sky noise. This has been done to help get a bit more appreciation of where the sources of sky
noise come from and how they link to the two equations in this task for calculating total system
noise going into a receiver. You will find that the video is a bit longer than a normal tasks worth
of a video due to the attention to details required. Thus you may find it useful to pause at points
and rewind as you go along in order to ensure you are following it all properly.

After completing the task you can note the two equations that you should then be able to fully
understand and they are shown here for your reference. First of all the noise temperature arriving
at the antenna, TAntenna is therefore:

A

A
TAntenna = TTropospheric 1 10 10 + TCosmic10 10

where TTropospheric is the noise temperature of the rain medium, A is attenuation in dB through
clouds and TCosmic is cosmic noise temperature from the sun and stars that is attenuated directly
through clouds. Remember all these temperatures are in Kelvin! All these noise parameters are
limited to laws of physics and things we cannot change. The remaining sources of noise that form
our system noise temperature, Tsystem below are:

L
feeder L
feeder
Tsystem = Trec + Tfeeder 1 10 10 + TAntenna10 10

where feeder cable noise temperature is Tfeeder, the feeder cable loss is Lfeeder and the receiver
noise temperature is Trec. You should satisfy yourself that you have understood everything you
need to know about decibels and using temperature to derive noise with a given bandwidth.
Making your own notes about it will also be useful in preparing for your revision at a later stage.

Task 2 Understanding Noise Factor and Noise Figure

You were introduced to noise factor and noise figure in the last class. A video has been made for
you to deepen that knowledge now so you can appreciate how an amplifier adds noise. Also it
reminds you about the difference between noise factor and noise figure that are distinguished in
this module for learning purposes. You can watch this video clip and follow it accordingly.

As you will have seen again in the video, the noise factor is taken as the ratio of the input signal
to noise ratio to the output signal to noise ratio. You should make sure you realise why this is the
case so then you can properly articulate it. On the next page some mathematics are shown to
appreciate why this is the case, by doing essentially a proof of what was shown and said in the
video clip. All of the notations shown below are the same as what they are in the video and so

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you can satisfy yourself that the noise factor, F is in agreement with the following equivalence
when considering the ratio of the signal to noise ratio in to the signal to noise ratio out:

S in
SNR in S in N out S FGN in
Noise Factor F= = N in = = in =F
SNR out S out N in S out N in GS in
N out
F >1

Task 3 Relating Noise Factor to Added Noise and Noise Temperature

We can now do some further mathematics that allows us to appreciate how the added noise
relates to noise temperature. We can deduce from the previous task that:

N out = FGN in GN in + N Added

Therefore this means that the equation can be re-arranged as follows:

N Added
F = 1+
GN in

From this we can define GNin as the ambient noise power, N0. It is left as an exercise for the
student to see that from earlier tasks this can be related to the equivalent noise temperatures and
hence the following equation can be derived:

TAdded
F = 1+
T0

Note that this added noise temperature is the same as the receiver noise temperature in task 1.
Therefore an amplifier with a lower noise figure at the receiver clearly is going to add less noise
and thus the signal to noise ratio will be better.

Task 4 Deriving the overall noise factor with more than one device
Some RF receivers consist of two amplifiers to help pick up and recover weak received signals.
Though the overall gain of the two amplifiers is the product of their two gains, we cannot just
simply multiply the two noise factors together in the same way. The mathematics is slightly
different and we now need to go and derive why. Consider the scenario in Figure 1 where we
have two amplifiers each with different noise figures so therefore they add different noise, NA1
and NA2. They also have respective power gains G1 and G2.

G1 N1 = G1Nin + NA1 G2

Nin Nout = G2N1 + NA2

Adds NA1 Adds NA2

Figure 1 - Illustration of two amplifiers which add different noise

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Examine the remaining equations in Figure 1, where you can see the noise amplified from the first
amplifier, N1 and the resultant noise at the output. Satisfy yourself that these equations are
understood from what you have learnt in previous tasks. Now taking those two equations, you will
find that they substitute into each other and simplify as follows:

N out = G2 N1 + N A2 = G2 [G1 N in + N A1 ] + N A2
N out = G1G2 N in + G2 N A1 + N A2

Now from here we can arrange the equation as follows:

N N A2
N out = G1G2 N in 1 + A1 +
G1 N in G1G2 N in

From earlier it should be possible to realise that the noise factors of the two individual amplifiers
have the following relations:

N A1 N A2
F1 = 1 + F2 = 1 +
G1 N in G2 N in

Hence, show that:

F 1
N out = G1G2 N in F1 + 2
G1

By inspection of the above equation, you should be able to deduce that as output noise is the
product of input noise, total amplifier gain and total noise factor. You should therefore find that
the combined noise factor, FT, of the two amplifiers is as follows:

F 1
FT = F1 + 2
G1

and hence N out = FT G1G2 N in . Satisfy yourself that if you swapped the two amplifiers around, thus
there was G2 is before G1, you could go through the above derivation and find that:

F 1
FT = F2 + 1
G2

Note that whichever way around the amplifiers are, then the total gain, GT is as follows:

GT = G1G2 = G2G1

Note also that the total noise factor can be converted to noise figure by 10logFT but be careful
since to find the overall noise figure, you have to use F1 and F2 as noise factors and the gain must
be in linear form or the equation would not work.

Task 5 Analysing the effect of the noise figure and gain on a low noise amplifier
Go to the video for this task and you will see how the low noise amplifier gain and the noise
figure affect the output signal to noise ratio from two amplifiers. Ensure you understand from this
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that it is always essential to place a low noise amplifier at the start of a chain in order to achieve
a low noise in the whole system. Also ensure you realise why a high gain is needed at the start of
the chain.

Task 6 Mixers and Down Conversion

A mixer is used to multiply two RF frequencies together. In the video you can see how this
happens and how then a band pass filter used together with the mixer as illustrated in Figure 2, is
used to convert an RF frequency, fRF down to a low intermediate frequency, fIF by mixing it with a
local oscillator frequency fLO, which has a frequency close to fRF. Thus fRF fLO >> fIF.

Note from the video that the intermediate frequency is f IF = f RF f LO and is typically low in the
order of tens of MHz, or maybe hundreds of MHz, which is a manageable frequency that the
receiver can then do any digital signal processing and demodulation with the recovered signal.
Hence by reducing to this smaller manageable frequency it is termed as down conversion.

fRF IF
fIF
Filter

fLO
Figure 2 - Basic function of a mixer as a down converter

Task 7 - Superhetreodyne receivers

The superhetreodyne (or superhet) receiver uses both a low noise amplifier, filters and a mixer to
build this commonly used radio receiver. The structure is illustrated in Figure 3, where you will
note that the first device after the antenna is a low noise amplifier as clearly we want to obtain
the best signal to noise ratio we can. Think to yourself if the filter was before the LNA would this
be bad for the receiver?

Image
Rejection Video
Filter Filter

fRF
LNA Detector fIF

IF
Filter
fLO

Figure 3 - Illustration of a superhet receiver

After the LNA is an image rejection filter. Think to yourself why is this required? Well if we did not
have an image rejection filter note that given the local oscillator has a fixed frequency and that to
get an IF frequency you have to satisfy the criteria that:

f IF = f RF f LO

Therefore on this basis, it is left as an exercise for the student to work out that when the local
oscillator is at a fixed frequency, and assuming there are many RF signals across a band that the

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receiver could pick up, then there are two frequencies that will down convert to the same
intermediate frequency that satisfy the criteria. Therefore the two frequencies can be defined as
follows:

f RF1 = f LO + f IF
f RF2 = f LO f IF

Clearly in the above case if there are signals to be received at fRF1 and fRF2 then they will
superimpose on each other and cause spurious interference at the intermediate frequency. It is
therefore necessary to reject one of them by filtering it out before down conversion and hence
this is the function of the image rejection filter. By inspection of Figure 4 it is clear that in this
case fRF2 is being filtered out and is an image frequency to fRF1 when taking the local oscillator
frequency as the line of symmetry.

fIF fIF

Image Rejection Filter

f
fRF2 fLO fRF1

Figure 4 - Illustration of an image rejection filter function

Now that just fRF1 has been down converted, it can be seen in the remainder of Figure 3 that the
IF filter plays the same role as the band pass filter in down conversion. As this is now a more
manageable frequency the detector amplifier can be easily built from an operational amplifier to
enable the down converted signal to be easily demodulated and processed. Note that there is a
video filter after the detector. This will filter out any unnecessary out of band noise and help
smooth the signal that is being demodulated and processed. Note however that the detector does
nothing to improve the overall signal to noise ratio, rather the received signal to noise ratio is
down to the low noise amplifier while the detector is merely compensating losses in the down
conversion and filters that can occur in the pass band. It is also conceivable that two LNAs can be
used before the image rejection filter in order to improve the received signal to noise ratio even
further.

Finally note that the receiver in Figure 3 is tuned to receive at one frequency. If however, the
centre frequency and the local oscillator were changed simultaneously, the receiver could then
tune to receive a different frequency. Hence this is how they are adjusted in a tuneable receiver.