Design Tip
AC parameters as they affect LDO
performance in RF devices
By John McGinty, Micrel
M any AC parameters affect RF system performance including
transient response, power supply ripple rejection and self noise.
Power supply ripple rejection, PSRR, is the regulator’s ability to
reject input noise at a specific frequency. It is a measure relative to
frequency and it is always expressed in dB. The importance of this
parameter in a battery-powered application is thus: batteries give an
ideal voltage source when there are no perturbations in that voltage
source. Lithium-ion batteries have a reasonable amount of output
impedance compared to other batteries. The output voltage will show
a large variation based upon the current drawn from that battery. In
GSM, transmit and receive cycles in the RF draw a huge amount of
current, causing a large change in voltage on the output of the battery.
That change in voltage is seen throughout the system and on inputs
to all of the system regulators. Regulators powering noise-sensitive
circuits, such as RF chipsets, must be able to reject large change in
supply voltage so that RF circuitry doesn’t modulate that noise into the
RF output and cause interference between adjacent operating channels,
or users. As seen in Figure 1, MIC5305 PSSR prevents interference;
Lithium-ion batteries have a reasonable amount of
output impedance compared to other batteries. The
output voltage will show a large variation based
upon the current drawn from that battery.
76 www.rfdesign.com
the RF will function without problems.
When designing with a lithium-ion battery system, the usable range
of the battery is between 3.0 V to 4.2 V. The output impedance of
that battery goes up when the voltage drops and at low temperatures.
Meaning, at low supply voltages and cold temperatures, the changes
in the output voltage of the battery, with the same change in current
caused by the actual transmission of data through the power amplifier
of a GSM system, will be much larger. With the same PSRR level, the
output of the regulator will have more noise than at nominal battery
voltage and nominal temperature. Hence, the necessary PSRR level
required to maintain good RF sensitivity under extreme conditions is
very high.
All power supplies take some finite amount of time to respond to
changes. When input voltage to a regulator changes, the output voltage
starts to move because, virtually instantaneously, all bias points and
steady state conditions change. The output will start to change as well.
The transient response of the regulator determines the amount of time it
takes for the LDO to realize that its output has changed, combined with
the amount of time it takes
the LDO to start pulling
the output back into nomi-
nal regulation. This factor
depends on bias currents,
slew rates of amplifiers,
and the amount of output
capacitance the loop is de-
signed to work with. The
more output capacitance,
the less voltage change
the output of the regulator
will see. Likewise, for a change in output current. When the output of
the regulator sees a large change in output current, the output capacitor
discharges until the regulator reacts to changing current and voltage
on the output and pulls the output back into regulation.
In order to achieve wide large signal bandwidth, the regulator will
have to consume a significant amount of current itself in order to
broadband the amplifiers as well as giving the loop significant slew
September 2005
 load transient response, as shown in Figures 2 and 3, show the tran-
sient response of a 150 mA regulator with 90 uA of quiescent current
(MIC5305l) vs. the transient response of a 150 mA regulator with 18
uA of quiescent current (MIC5235 ). The 18 uA regulator has a sig-
nificant amount of output capacitance yet still has more voltage droop
because it requires a significantly larger amount of time to respond
to load changes. While MIC5305 regulator has a significantly faster
transient response and has less voltage droop even though the output
capacitor is a lower value than that of MIC5235.
Various AC parameters will always affect RF system performance.
With careful design considerations and IC solutions, designers can get
the best possible LDO performance for their products. RFD

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

rate capability. Normally, when designing a low-power regulator, the John McGinty is a senior applications engineer at Micrel Inc. in San
currents scale down significantly and the load transient response scales Jose, CA. He joined the company in ?…Need more bio info.
down as well. The MIC5305 load transient response and MIC5235

78 www.rfdesign.com September 2005