Radio Frequency, RF, Technology and Design

- concise guides, information, tutorials and data about radio frequency, RF, technology and RF design.

Types of radio modulation

There is a huge variety of different types of modulation or modulation techniques that can be used to superimpose information, either digital or analogue onto an RF signal.

• Overview of the different modulation techniques available
• What is amplitude modulation
• What is frequency modulation
• Phase modulation tutorial including PSK, MSK, GMSK, and QAM

Radio signal modulation formats

Although there is a large variety of different modulation techniques that can be used, different signal formats can be used along with these modulation techniques to enable radio signals to be used in differnet ways. Some of these techniques are given below:

• Tutorial of the basics of OFDM
• Tutorial of the basics of MIMO
• CDMA basics

Frequency Synthesizers

Frequency synthesizers are widely used in radio receivers. Upon their performance depends many of the parameters of the whole receiver. Particularly important is the phase noise performance as this can limit the performance of a complete radio communications system.

• Phase locked loop tutorial
• Basic operation of an indirect (PLL) frequency synthesizer
• Phase detector
• PLL loop filter design
• Synthesizer PLL phase noise
• Direct digital synthesizer, DDs tutorial
• Low phase noise synthesizer design
• VCO phase noise
• VCO voltage controlled oscillator design
• Phase noise / phase jitter tutorial

RF Elements

• RF combiners, splitters,hybrids, couplers tutorial
• Tutorial of the basics of RF filters
• The fundamentals of RF mixers and mixing
• Attenuators

VSWR and Return Loss

• Summary of Return loss and how it is used
• Chart / table relating return loss to VSWR and reflection co-efficient

Bit error rate

• Bit error rate overview
• Bit error rate testing