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Design of an RF Low-Noise Bandpass Filter

Using Active Device Reduction Technique
Moon-Seok Chung, Student Member, IEEE, Il-Soo Kim, and Sang-Won Yun, Member, IEEE

Abstract—This letter presents a new design for the RF

low-noise bandpass filter (BPF) using the active device reduction
technique. In a conventional active BPF based on the negative
resistance method, the number of active devices depends on the
order of the BPF. In the proposed design the number of active
devices is reduced in half, using the suggested new technique.
Compared with the conventional active BPF, the proposed one
shows better noise figure and consumes less power. We apply this
technique to the design of the second order BPF and verify that
the measured results exhibit good active filter performances.

Index Terms—Active filters, Bandpass filters, Negative Fig. 1. The conventional second order active bandpass filter using the active
resistance circuits. capacitance circuits.

I. INTRODUCTION

M ONOLITHIC microwave integrated circuit (MMIC)/RF

integrated circuit (RFIC) technology is popular because
GaAs- and Si-based processes are more common now. Even
though there have been many efforts to integrate the whole RF
system into a single chip, one of the major difficulties lies in
designing of the miniaturized BPFs without sacrificing its
typical performances. When we shrink the volume of an
integrated RF filter, we usually obtain poorer performances. It
is well known that the smaller the resonator size is, the smaller
its Q value becomes. Therefore, increasing Q values with a
smaller resonator size is the key for the integrated BPF design. Fig. 2. The proposed active bandpass filter using active device reduction
technique.
In the past several years, many authors have published active
filter design methods based on active resonators [1]-[2], active and tested at cellular band (800~900 MHz). We also compare
coupling [3]-[4], and other schemes [5]. In those filter the characteristics of the proposed active BPF with those of the
configurations, the number of active devices are more than the conventional active BPF.
number of resonators.
This letter, on the other hand, presents a new technique that II. ANALYSIS OF ACTIVE BANDPASS FILTER USING ACTIVE
reduces the number of active devices in half. One negative DEVICE REDUCTION TECHNIQUE
resistance circuit is shared by two resonators in the proposed
BPF. Also, an active capacitance circuit employing a BJT and a The conventional active BPF, based on the negative
series-feedback circuit [6] introduces the negative resistance in resistance method, is shown in Fig. 1 [7]. The active
order to compensate for an insertion loss. The detailed circuit capacitance circuit, which consists of a BJT and an RLC
analysis that follows leads us to obtain the equivalent circuit as series-feedback (Rd, Ld, Cd) network, provides the negative
well as design equations. The proposed active BPF is designed resistance to compensate for the parasitic elements of inductors.
In the case of the conventional active BPF, the number of active
Manuscript received August 1, 2006; This work was supported by in part by
capacitance circuits is as many as the number of resonators. In
the Agency for Defense Development, Korea, through the Radiowave Fig. 2 we propose a filter network in which an active
Detection Research Center at KAIST. capacitance circuit is shared by two adjacent resonators, and
The authors are with the Department of Electronic Engineering, Sogang thereby the number of active devices used can be reduced in
University, Sinsu-Dong, Seoul, Korea (e-mail: doorrock2@sogang.ac.kr,
78secret@sogang.ac.kr; swyun@.sogang.ac.kr). half.
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The values of the real and complex part in (3)-(6) are related to
the negative resistance compensating for the parasitic
resistance of inductors and the capacitance of the resonator in
the proposed active BPF. It is possible to find the values of the
capacitance of resonator (Cr) and the series capacitance (C12)
by (7)-(8).

1
Cr = (7)
Fig. 3. (a) The equivalent circuit of the proposed active bandpass filter.
w Im[Z1, 2 ]
(b) The equivalent circuit through Δ to Y conversion.
1
The proposed schematic diagram is given in Fig. 2. Through C12 = C '12 + (8)
w Im[Z 3 ]
Δ to Y conversion [8], the equivalent circuit shown in Fig. 3
can be easily obtained. The active capacitance circuit is shown
From the traditional filter design equation and (3)-(8), the
as simply C’neg, − R’neg (R’neg 〉0) in Fig. 3 (a). As shown in
proposed filter is more simply designed.
reference [6], C’neg and − R’neg can be solved by considering
the small signal equivalent model of a BJT. In this letter,
however, we omit the specific expressions because C’neg and
III. APPLICATION TO DESIGN BANDPASS FILTER
− R’neg are well derived in [6]. The equivalent circuit
parameters (Z1, Z2, and Z3) in Fig. 3 (b) can be expressed as
follows, The proposed filter in Fig. 3 is fabricated by following the
procedures listed below:
Z a Z b + Z b Z neg + Z a Z neg
Z 1, 2 = 1) Design a conventional bandpass filter using the method
Z b,a described in [9]
(1)
1 − jwC ' neg R ' neg −2 jwC ' c R ' neg 2) Determine Im[Z1,2,3] from (7)-(8) and the circuit
= parameter in step 1.
jwC ' c + w 2 C ' neg C ' c R ' neg 3) Obtain the parameters (C’neg, − R’neg, C’c) shown in Fig.
3 (a) from Re, Im[Z1,2,3] and (3)-(6).
Z a Z b + Z b Z neg + Z a Z neg 4) Design the active capacitance circuit (C’neg, − R’neg)
Z3 = using the topology described in [7].
Z neg 5) Fabricate the filter shown in Fig. 2.
(2)
j ( j + wC ' neg R ' neg +2 wC ' c R ' neg )
=− 2
w 2 C ' c R' neg IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

From (1)-(2), a complex impedance [ Z ( w) = R( w) + jX ( w) ] An Active BPF, based on the active device reduction
may also be derived. The result of this analysis shows that the technique, is designed using Infineon’s BFP540 transistor and
values of the real and complex part are: lumped elements (with the design parameters given in Table I)
to validate the analysis discussed above. Compared to the
conventional active BPF of a second order, we verify the
2 R'neg
Re[ Z1, 2 ] = − (3) performances of the proposed active BPF at the cellular band
1 + ( wC 'neg R'neg ) 2 (869~894 MHz). Fig. 4 shows the measured frequency
2 response of the conventional as well as the proposed active
1 2 wC 'neg R'neg
Im[Z1, 2 ] = − + (4)
BPF with almost zero insertion loss at the center frequency
wC 'c 1 + ( wC 'neg R'neg ) 2 (881.5 MHz).
TABLE I
DESIGN PARAMETERS
1
Re[ Z 3 ] = 2 2
(5)
w C 'c R'neg Bandpass Filter Active Capacitance Circuit
C 'neg +2C 'c C01 = 1 pF Cext = 5 pF
Im[Z 3 ] = − (6)
wC 'c
2 C’12 = 0.125 pF Rd = 5 Ω
C’C = 1.5 pF Ld = 15 nH
L = 15 nH Cd = 10 pF
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Fig. 4. Measured frequency responses of the conventional and the proposed
active BPFs.
Fig. 5. Measured noise figure of the conventional and the proposed active
BPF.
Fig. 5 shows the measured noise figure of the conventional
and proposed active BPFs. The conventional active BPF has
about 3 dB of noise figure, while the proposed active BPF has
approximately 2 dB of noise figure at the center frequency. The
total noise figure of the active BPF can be calculated by the
method in [9]. With the active device reduction technique, the
internal noise current source of the BJT decreases, thereby
reducing noise figure. Fig. 6 presents the measured
intermodulation distortion of the fabricated active BPFs. The
OIP3 of the conventional active BPF is 5 dBm (collector
voltage Vc = 1 V, collector current Ic = 5 mA), while that of the
proposed active BPF is 6 dBm (Vc = 1 V, Ic = 1 mA). The IM
distortion can be analyzed by the method in [10]. The
third-order intercept point of the active BPF hardly depends on
the number of active devices, therefore the measured results
show little difference of OIP3 between the two active BPFs.
V. CONCLUSION
We have presented an RF low-noise active BPF using the
active device reduction technique. The proposed technique can
reduce the number of active devices in half, as compared with
the conventional configuration, because one negative
resistance circuit is shared by two adjacent resonators of the
3
BPF. From the simple circuit analysis ( Δ to Y conversion), the
equivalent circuits and design equations are derived. The
proposed scheme gives better performances than the
conventional active BPF in several areas including circuit
complexity, noise figure and power dissipation. We observed a
very good agreement between the theoretical and measured
results.
Fig. 6. Measured IM characteristics : (a) the conventional active BPF (b) the
proposed active BPF.
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