Hybrid Recursive Active Filters for Duplexing in

RF Transmitter Front-Ends
15th Mediterranean Microwave Symposium - MMS 2015
Topic: Microwave Active Devices, Circuits and Subsystems
Giuseppe Gottardo∗ , Giovanni Donati∗ , Christian Musolff∗ , Georg Fischer∗ and Tilman Felgentreff†
∗ Institute
for Electronics Engineering, Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg
Cauerstr. 9, 91058 Erlangen, Germany, Tel: +49 9131 85-27653, Fax: +49 9131 302951, Email: giuseppe.gottardo@fau.de
† Nokia Networks, RF BTS Technology, Lise-Meitner-Str. 7, 89081 Ulm, Germany

Abstract—Duplex filters in modern base stations are designed
as cavity filters, which are expensive and have big dimensions.
Thanks to the emerging digital technology and fast digital
converters, it is possible to transfer the efforts of designing analog
duplex filters into digital numeric algorithms applied to feedback
structures, operating on power amplifiers in transmitters. The
design of a digital baseband feedback applied to the analog
power RF amplifiers (hybrid filter) is presented and verified by
measurements. The use of multiple digital feedback branches
allows the closed loop system to show a periodic band-pass
behavior at the output of the RF amplifier with a larger
bandwidth up to 500 KHz. Moreover the band pass magnitude
reaches up to 17 dB difference between maximum gain and
attenuation.
Index Terms—Active filter; feedback amplifier; base station;
stability analysis; interference suppression; band-pass filters;
cavity resonators.
I. I NTRODUCTION
signal is transmitted and thus before antenna and receiver
itself. However this implementation is not widely used in high
power transmitters because it leads often to an efficiency drop
of the PA. Recursive active filters are representing an attractive
alternative to previous strategies, since they are implemented
in the transmitter architecture and they allow a good increase
of the quality factor compared to the normal forward config-
uration filters [6]–[8]. The disadvantage of latter solution is
the use of a feedback path that has to be handled with care
in order to avoid instability problems. A feasibility study has
been presented in [9] in order to implement an hybrid active
recursive filter applied to transmitters that integrates digital and
analog hardware moving towards a Software Defined Radio
(SDR) solution. This architecture is verified by measurements
in [10] reaching up to 20 dB difference between maximum
gain and attenuation for a narrow band application.
SDR aims to replace many analog parts, such as duplex

H IGH quality factor are required to cavity filters in the

modern base stations in order to suppress the out-of-
band signals and spurious emissions between receive and
transmit bands. These analogue/mechanical band-pass filters
are designed to operate at fixed frequency bands in order
to isolate the receiver with reference sensitivity level up to
−121 dBm from the high power transmitter output reaching
up to +38 dBm [1]. The common values of attenuation (80
- 90 dB) and the short transition bandwidth (starting from 10
MHz) required by the duplexer is achieved using expensive
materials and occupying large space inside Base Transceiver
Station (BTS).
The design effort and the cost of these filters can be reduced
attenuating the signal before the duplexer. For this reason
several approaches have been proposed in order to decrease the
level of spurious emissions due to the non-linear behavior of
the power amplifier (PA), and in order to attenuate the desired
frequency bands. Cost-effective implementations are obtained
with feed-forward loop cancellation at the transmitter as in [2]
or transmitter leakage cancellation at the receiver as in [3]–
[5]. The first solution attenuates the band of interest before the
signal is fed to the antenna and transmitted, the second one
attenuates the unwanted spectral emissions just at the receiver.
In a BTS scenario the feed-forward solution is reasonable
because it lets to suppress unwanted emissions before the
filters and mixers, with software algorithms transferring func-
tional requirements to digital signal processors (DSPs). As
discussed in [11] analog feedback loops do not usually add
a meaningful delay to the processed signals, since the propa-
gation time in the analog components is small in comparison
to the period of the fundamental frequency. On the contrary,
in a partially digital feedback, the usage of analog to digital
converters (ADCs) and digital to analog converters (DACs)
adds a delay equal to an integer number of samples because
of the buffering of the input signal. This delay added by the
converters can cancel the benefits of feedback loop leading
it in the worst case to instability. However, digital feedback
systems performs high accuracy digital calculations that are
difficult to achieve with common analog elements. Moreover
design and implementation stages gain in flexibility and analog
elements can be replaced by digital ones reducing nonlinear
sources and improving the linearity of the overall system.
For this reason it is meaningful, starting from the solution
presented in [10], to take advantage of the digital feedback
design and make recursive active filters suitable for BTS
scenario. The main purpose of this research focuses on the
design of an active recursive hybrid filter based on a digital
feedback loop applied to analog PAs. This solution offers a
band-pass behavior of the transmitted signal at the output of
the PA that allows to relax cavity filter requirements, saving

978-1-4673-7602-0/15/$31.00 ©2015 IEEE

 closedllooplmagnitude
digital analog
3
cl.lloopl1
cl.lloopl2
x(t) y(t) 2 cl.lloopl3
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magnitudel[dB]
1

-1

τd1 1 τRX -2
b1
8.502 8.504 8.506 8.508 8.51 8.512 8.514 8.516 8.518
1 frequencyl[Hz] × 10 8
τd2
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op.lloopl1
op.lloopl2
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60
1

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-20

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Fig. 1. Model used to investigate the band-pass behavior of hybrid recursive -100

-140
active filter. The scheme integrates analog and digital hardware with multiple
-180
feedback branches. 8.502 8.504 8.506 8.508 8.51 8.512 8.514 8.516 8.518
frequencyl[Hz] × 10 8

size and costs in BTS. Thanks to the implementation on a field
programmable gate array (FPGA) the filter allows the overall
transmitter to be frequency agile and adaptive becoming a
good candidate for cognitive radio applications.
The outline of this paper is as follows: Section II describes
the hybrid filter theoretical concept, Section III describes its
design and implementation. Section IV shows the measure-
ment results. Section V is the conclusion.
II. M ULTIPLE F EEDBACK A RCHITECTURE
The application of a digital feedback between output and
input of the PA leads to an Hybrid Recursive Active Filter.
The hybrid structure consists of an analog RF PA operating
in conjunction with the digital hardware composed of an
FPGA board, DACs and ADCs. It has been shown in [9],
[10] the model valid for the description of a single feedback
architecture. The multi-feedback architecture is represented in
Fig. 1. Ideally assuming that the PA delivers a constant output
power over the bandwidth of investigation, it is represented
by a model described by a gain a and a delay τa in the
forward chain. Moreover τT X models the delay introduced
in the forward chain by DACs and other analog contributions.
The feedback chain is modeled as a delay τRX , introduced by
the ADCs, analog modules and DSP. Each digital feedback
path is configured to process the output signal with a specific
attenuation (1/b1 , 1/b2 , 1/b3 , 1/bi , bi > 1) and a path-specific
digital delay (τd1 , τd2 , τd3 , τdi ) introduced by DSP/FPGA.
Taking into account the equation for the single feedback case
presented in [10] the new transfer function describing Fig. 1
relating y(t) to the input signal x(t) is
a · e−j2πf (τT X +τa )
H(f ) = N  
. (1)
a −j2πf (τT X +τa +τRX +τdi )
P
1+ bi · e
i=1
This new architecture uses a combination of different modes
as shown in Fig. 2, each one due to a feedback path and with
a specific periodic band-pass behavior defined by parameters
Fig. 2. Closed loop magnitude (as relative gain added to the normal PA
gain) and open loop phase due to application of each feedback path of Fig.
1 defined by parameters 1/bi and τdi for i = 1..4.
1/bi and τdi . Pass-band and stop-band central frequencies fi+
and fi− are related with τi = τT X + τa + τRX + τdi as
2n ∓ 1
fi+ = ; (2)
2τi
n
fi− = . (3)
τi
The signal coming from each feedback path is combined con-
structively with the input x(t) under condition (2) producing
a gain at the output y(t), whereas under the condition (3), the
signal x(t) is combined destructively with y(t) producing a
lower gain compared with the gain a of the PA.
III. D ESIGN AND I MPLEMENTATION
The model presented above was validated using the Vector
Signal Transceiver PXIe-5645R from National Instruments.
This transceiver has RF inputs/outputs able to generate and
acquire signals from 65 MHz to 6 GHz with 80 MHz in-
stantaneous bandwidth. The analog RF module is interfaced
with the digital baseband subsystem through 16-bits ADCs
and DACs. The signal processing is implemented in a Xilinx
Virtex-6 FPGA board controlling the output/input streaming.
NI Labview tools allow to program the digital hardware inside
the FPGA, converters, internal amplifier (up to 15 dB gain)
and mixers. The digital system has a 120 MHz reference clock.
As shown in Fig. 3 the signal flows from the transmitter to
the receiver through a 6 dB coupler and the digital feedback
paths are implemented inside the FPGA. A digital baseband
reference signal x(t) is generated in order to measure the
transfer function of the closed loop system. The signal is a sum
of 100 tones equally spaced by 20 kHz (2 MHz bandwidth of
transmitted signal) and centered around 851.05 MHz.
 PC TABLE I
Control
C OMPARISON BETWEEN RESOURCES USED WITH INITIAL MODEL AND
WITH OPTIMIZED IMPLEMENTATION
Acquisition

Generation Parameters Normal Optimized

FSW R&S Sample frequency 120 MHz 120 MHz
PXIe-5645R
Total paths i 10 10
FPGA DAC
Configuration Shift register 9690 1680
90◦ a
0◦ LO Σ −6 dB

Acquisition
DAC τd0i 1
b0i

Generation
τd03 1
b03
ADC
DSP τd02 1 digital analog
1 b02
90◦ ◦ LO
b1

0
Synchronization τd01 1
b01
ADC x(t) x∗ (t) y(t)
b∗ τT X a τa

Fig. 3. Setup used to test the hybrid recursive active filter of Fig. 1.
τd1 1
b1
τRX
digital analog τd2 1
b2

τd3 1
x(t) y(t) b3
τT X a τa
τdi 1
bi

Fig. 5. Extension of previous design with a feed-forward pre-processing.

1 τd1 τRX
b1
1 Additional digital Feed-Forward
τd∗2
b2
In order to obtain a larger selectivity, defined as difference
1 τd∗3 between stop-band and pass-band magnitude of the output
b3
spectrum, a digital feed-forward path is applied to the previous
1 τd∗i design as in Fig. 5. The parameters of the feed-forward system
bi
are calculated as
Fig. 4. FPGA implementation for the hybrid recursive active filter of Fig. 1. 1
= −3 · (i − 1) [dB] i = 1..n; (7)
b0i
τd0i = i · (τT X + τa + τRX ) i = 1..n. (8)
Optimized Multi-Feedback Design and Implementation
Parameters 1/bi and τdi are estimated as Stability Condition
1 1 Because of the presence of a feedback loop a stability
= − (i − 2) [dB] i = 2..n; (4) analysis is needed in order to define functional limits of the
bi bi−1
system. The Nyquist diagram is the quickest way to verify the
τdi = i · τ1 − (τT X + τa + τRX ) i = 2..n. (5)
stability of this system. It consists of a parametric plot of the
The case i = 1 is defined by the minimum τ1 achievable open loop transfer function. Using the nyquist criterion like in
by the system. For this reason the delay τ1 = 1.55 µs is [9] it is possible to check the proximity of the system to the
calculated as in [10]. The attenuation 1/b1 = −10.8 dB is instability point.
fixed by the transceiver to ensure the best noise figure and
it keeps together also the coupler attenuation. However the IV. R ESULTS
calculation of each τdi in (5) needs τT X , τa , τRX parameters Both designs described above are implemented in the FPGA
that are difficult to measure. It is possible to get rid of these using i = 10 paths. In Fig. 6 simulations and measurements are
parameters considering that shown. The matching between measurement and simulation
τdi+1 − τdi = τ1 i = 2..n. (6) in both cases demonstrates that the presented model is valid
to predict the behavior of the hybrid active recursive filter.
From (6), each ith feedback path adds a fixed delay τd∗i = τ1 The usage of a multi-feedback structure (dashed line) allows
for i = 2..n at the ith − 1 feedback path. The optimized to have control of a pass-band up to 500 KHz bandwidth
implementation is depicted in Fig. 4 and it uses less than 25% leading to a filter with a flatter pass-band larger than the
of FPGA shift registers if compared to the initial model in single feedback solution in [10]. The usage of additional
Fig. 1 as shown in TABLE I. feed-forward branches (dash-dot line) allows to get more
 MeasurementsnvsnSimulationsnwithn(ndbngainpnakb=c)(y8ndBnloopngainpn)y55nu snlatency
about ten times lower delay that means τ = 155 ns. Moreover
c3xy)(93
it is possible to get rid of the unused repetitions caused by
the feedback implementing a digital band-pass filter in the
nnn)84
dBkMHz )6y94ndB feedback chain in order to have the desired band-pass behavior
just in the band of interest.
c38y4958
V. C ONCLUSION
c4(y99)7
Thanks to a model resuming the principal characteristics
Powern[dBm]

of a BTS transmitter a new hybrid recursive active filter is

investigated and verified by measurements. The use of multiple
c46y6347 digital feedbacks and a pre-processing stage in the digital feed-
forward leads to a band-pass filter with an attractive selectivity.
c49y(4x)
The key advantage of this architecture is the possibility to
normalntransmitternoutput
activenfeedbackngmeasurements,
activenfeedbacknandnforwardngmeasurements,
perform all the design in the digital domain of BTS reducing
activenfeedbackngsimulation,
activenfeedbacknandnforwardngsimulation, size and costs problems often related to the analog one.
maxkminnmagnitudengmeasurements,

85(y5x585(y65n 85)y(8n 85)yxxn

Moreover this hybrid structure is a software defined filter
freqn[MHz] that can be adaptive depending on the different applications
and signal standard scenarios. The proposed setup is currently
Fig. 6. Simulation and measurements for the multi-feedback design (dashed
line) and the additional feed-forward processing (dash-dot line). being investigated and enhanced in order to extend the proof
of concept to a larger band-pass filter and to use it for standard
wideband communication systems.
gain and attenuation in some frequency bands reaching up
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