EE 421: Communications I

Dr. Mohammed Hawa

Project: FM Receiver Circuit (Hardware)
Due Date: Sunday, December 28, 2010
You will learn in this project some of the hardware aspect of FM radio by building a simple
FM receiver.
To get the points for this project, you need to build the FM receiver circuit shown below
and get it to work. The circuit is a self-quenched super-regenerative receiver. I recommend that
you use a strip board or a PCB to build your circuit. Using a breadboard at FM frequencies
(i.e., around 100 MHz) is probably not a good idea.

RF Amplifier & FM Detector

R2
12 k Vcc
9V

L1 R3
R1 5 turns 1.2 k
12 k C7
Q1
Q2 10 F
BF494 or C8
2N3906 25V
BF199 C E
150 nF
R4
B B 1.2 k
E C2 C3 C
Antenna C4
10 pF 5-60 pF C9
10 nF
10 F C11
6 25V 220 F
C1 VR2 3 1
L2 8 25V
10 nF 13 H 1k 5
C6 LM386
9 turns 2
FT23-43 10 nF 7 C12
4 Headset
C10 47 nF
10 F
C5 25V R5
VR1
10 nF 10
20 k

Audio Amplifier

Strip boards are widely available, and represent your best choice. If you decid to build a
PCB you need to use a PCB software; examples include Mulisim/Ultiboard, Eagle, Express
PCB, OrCAD, etc. Read about PCBs at this Wikipedia link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printed_circuit_board
Note that there are different places here in Amman that can build a PCB for you, once you
give them the full PCB layout (on a trace paper) along with the required components. For a
Do-It-Yourself for PCBs, visit the following site:
http://electrons.psychogenic.com/modules/arms/art/10/PrintedCircuit
BoardPCBHOWTOAnIllustratedGuide.php

The Inductors (L1 and L2):

To build the oscillator coil (L1) wind five turns of (0.8 mm diameter) copper wire on an air
core of 8 mm diameter. The second coil (L2), which is used as an RF Choke consists of nine
turns of insulated cooper wire (e.g., enameled) on an FT23-43 RF Toroid. This represents a
13 µH inductor, and can be replaced by an axial 13 µH fixed inductor, if you can find one.

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The Variable Capacitor:
The small-sized screw-adjustable variable capacitors with the small tuning range of 0-20pF
or 0-30 pF might not work for this project. I suggest you use a tuning capacitor similar to the
ones used in AM/FM radios (see picture below). If you get one from an old radio, be aware
that it is a ganged capacitor (i.e., two capacitors controlled by one knob). Hence, it has
typically 6 leads coming from its sides. Three leads on one side (for Hi capacitor) and three
leads on the other side (for Lo Capacitor). The center terminal on these devices is ground.

You need to find the correct two terminals (of the Hi capacitor) to be able to tune over the
whole range of FM frequencies (from 88 MHz to 108 MHz). In order to do this, once the unit
is working well, you will have to try both sides and find out what side will tune over the
whole FM spectrum. The Lo capacitor will only tune a portion of the FM band. If you have
an LRC meter, you can measure the actual capacitance, instead.

If, for example, terminals # 1-3 are the Hi capacitor, it doesn't matter if you use terminal #1
and ground or terminal # 3 and ground. Either set of terminals will produce the correct pF's
you need.

Antenna:
The antenna should not be too long; otherwise the circuit may cause interference since the
super-regenerative circuit is also a transmitter! The circuit is very sensitive and operates
nicely using a 10 cm length of copper wire for an antenna. Actually, the receiver is so
sensitive that it does not actually need an antenna: the oscillator coil can pick up enough
energy directly from nearby FM stations.

Battery:
I suggest you run this circuit from a 9 V battery. I do not recommend using a common 9V
DC supply since those are not well regulated, and the variations in their voltage might
affect your circuit. If you decide to use a DC power supply, however, I suggest you use a
heavily-regulated DC supply (or add a regulator yourself) to get the best results.

Other Comments:
Short connections are preferred for this circuit, especially to the tuning capacitor. This will
minimize stray capacitance and inductance in the circuit.

Whether you use a strip board or a PCB it is always a good idea to add a grounded
screening (or a ground plane) for the circuit.

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Try to use high impedance headphones rather than a low impedance speaker, otherwise,
the output will not be as loud. If your circuit works, but is not loud enough, you can replace
the R6 (1.2 kΩ) resistance with a short circuit for extra gain from the audio amplifier.

Remember that super-regenerative receivers are extremely fiddly and are heavily
dependent on the transistor properties, so it is sometimes difficult to get a good quench
oscillation going, especially if you do not use the exact component values in the illustrated
design. Patience and some trial-and-error will come in handy at the final stages of the
project. The 20 kΩ trimmer is provided to allow for more control on the regeneration of the
circuit, so try to adjust the trimmer for optimal performance as you test your final circuit.

The Figures below show some prototypes that actually worked. Those are shown for
illustration purposes only, and your circuit does not have to look exactly like the ones
shown to work properly.

Be prepared to present your work and answer any questions I ask.

L1

GND Plane

L2

GND Plane

Some background on this circuit:

Regenerative and super-regenerative circuits were employed in early radio receivers and are
still being used by electronic hobbyists and in simple applications such as remote control
receivers. A regenerative circuit allows an electrical signal to be amplified many times by
the same transistor, while being demodulated. Using this concept of positive feedback
greatly increases both the selectivity (i.e., the ability to separate stations on a crowded band)
and sensitivity of the receiver while maintaining low parts count. Positive feedback builds
up the input signal to very high levels.

The inventor of FM radio, Edwin Armstrong, invented and patented the regenerative circuit
while he was a junior in college, in 1914. He patented the super-regenerative circuit in 1922.

Regenerative receivers use as the demodulator a controlled oscillator. An oscillator is an

amplifier with positive feedback and an LC tank to control which frequency is to be
amplified. In a straight regenerative circuit, the input signal couples to the oscillator, and

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some of the output signal is fed back to its input, in phase. This repeatedly amplifies the
input signal. The result is very high gain in a single stage. Using this technique, a single
transistor stage can achieve circuit gains of 20,000 easily.

The super-regenerative receiver differs from the regenerative receiver in that it sends more of
the output signal back to the input, which can achieve much higher gains on the order of
1,000,000. However, the problem is that once the feedback signal goes past a certain point,
the oscillator starts the oscillation process, in which case the circuit’s gain stops increasing
and starts decreasing, as most of the transistor’s energy works to maintain the oscillation.
To avoid oscillations in super-regenerative receivers, a type of regeneration control is
necessary, so that you can keep the feedback at a point just short of oscillation. Hence,
super-regenerative receivers use a second lower frequency oscillation to automatically stop
or “quenche” the oscillations of the main oscillator periodically, thus allowing the RF signal
to be built up over and over in that main oscillator, providing very high gains.
Super-regenerative detectors can use two approaches for the required quenching: Either a
separate lower-frequency oscillator supplies the quenching signal (called, separately-
quenched circuitry), or an extra capacitor is added to the oscillator that starts charging as
soon as oscillations start, causing it to turn off the main oscillator once it reaches a certain
voltage, at which time the capacitor discharges again, and the circuit starts to oscillate again
(this is called a self-quenched circuit).
Strictly speaking, in a super-regenerative receiver the main RF oscillation still occurs: the
detector starts to build up the incoming RF oscillation up to and slightly above oscillation
level. Hence, a main difference between a regenerative and a super-regenerative receiver is
that a heterodyne (squealing interference) can be heard in the super-regenerative receiver as
the set is tuned and operated.
The design presented in this project is a self-quenched super-regenerative detector. Its
performance does not equal that of modern commercial receivers, but it is inexpensive and
can be built quite compactly. As with any regenerative set, you will need practice and
patience in learning to adjust the receiver’s controls for best performance.
This receiver uses slope detection for FM. By tuning the main oscillator to one side of the
carrier, the receiver’s tuned circuit converts FM to AM, and the oscillator then demodulates
the AM signal. The bandwidth is about 200 kHz so wideband FM stations can be
demodulated by tuning the receiver to the most linear point of the response curve, rather
than the top of the curve as one would for AM. In practice, this simply means tuning for
clearest sound.

The heart of the receiver is Q1 which is an oscillator working as an RF amplifier and FM

demodulator. The output of the demodulator drives an audio amplifier consisting of a
single transistor Q2 followed by an LM386 audio amplifier IC. The LM386 drives the low
impedance headphones. A speaker can be used but the volume will not be particularly high.

When using this design, or any other super-regenerative receiver, it may often be found that
an audible tone is heard in the background when listening to a station transmitting stereo
programs. This is a result of subcarriers beating with the quench frequency. Adjustment of
the quench frequency will usually minimize the problem.

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