A Tunable Frequency & Bandwidth RF and Microwave filter

Speaker:  Laya Mohammadi (ECE, Virginia Tech)

Date: Friday, March 28, 2014
Time: 3 PM - 4 PM
Location: Whittemore 6th Floor Conference Room 

Abstract:

This work describes design techniques to achieve a wide tuning range Band Pass Filter (BPF) with independently adjustable Quality factor (Q) across the X and Ku bands. The proposed approach overcomes the drawbacks of passive LC filters by using active elements to improve the performance while avoiding the poor linearity and high NF common in active filter design. The circuit has been simulated in 0.13um SiGe BiCMOS IBM8HP process. Simulation results show that the filter center frequency can be tuned from 8.2 to 15.6 GHz with independent tuning of the filter Q from 4.5% to 20% of fractional bandwidth. The worst case NF varies from 14-17.5 dB. The proposed filter is highly linear throughout the entire frequency tuning band while IIP3 changes from 6 to 11 dBm.

Speaker:

Laya Mohammadi received a B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran, in 2008 and the M.S. degree from Tarbiat-Modares University, Tehran, Iran, in 2011. Her M.Sc. research was on wideband LNA design, and continued on phased array design until 2012. She is currently working toward the Ph.D degree in electrical engineering at Virginia Tech (VT). Her research interests include system and circuit design for RF and mm-Wave integrated communication transceivers.