Abstract-The operating environment of mobile phones fluctuates continuously, due to changing handling conditions and nearby objects. The resulting fluctuations in antenna impedance cause both a decrease in link quality and a higher standing wave ratio, that requires more robust and hence less efficient PA implementations. In this paper an automatic antenna tuner system for handheld applications is presented that uses two series reactances combined with 3 simple RF-peak detectors to sense both reactive and real impedance mismatches. The control loop only requires low-frequency electronics which makes it low cost, low power and relatively easy to integrate. Measurements on a demonstrator system show correct behaviour for VSWR up to 10.Index Terms-Impedance matching, antenna tuning, high efficiency power amplifiers, wireless communication systems.
The impedance of an antenna changes heavily with changing EM environments, while RF power amplifiers (PAs) are optimized for driving a well-defined load impedance. As a solution, switchable matching networks are used in automatic antenna tuners to match the antenna impedance to (about) the desired PA load impedance. This paper presents a theoretical treaty of the minimum number of required states for switchable matching networks to achieve sufficient matching from a certain load VSWR to a sufficiently low input VSWR. First for an arbitrary passive lossless switchable matching network, the mathematical minimum required number of states as a function of the required input VSWR and of the required load VSWR is derived. Several variants are analyzed and benchmarked: single-stage one-ring configuration, single-stage two-ring configuration, two-stage one-ring configuration and threestage one-ring configuration showing that single-ring configurations are optimum. An extension towards the required number of states for lossy matching networks is also provided.
Nowadays, more and more RF systems include switchable matching networks to decrease the impact of the environment-dependent antenna impedance on the RF front end performance. This paper reviews the theoretical lower limit on the required number of matching states to match VSWR ranges and then presents an analysis of hardware implementations to actually implement a suitable switchable matching network. A number of matching network topologies are analyzed: PI networks, loaded transmission lines, branch line coupler based circuits, single circulators and cascaded circulators. In our investigation only narrow-band applications are targeted. For the various circuit implementations the required number of matching states for each hardware implementation is compared to the theoretical minimum number of states required for the same matching in order to benchmark their hardware implementation overhead. It appears that a matching network using cascaded circulators is the closest to the theoretical optimum for networks with a relatively low number of states: this type of matching network was implemented and analyzed in more detail.
The operating environment of mobile phones fluctuates continuously, due to changing handling conditions and nearby objects. The resulting fluctuations in antenna impedance cause both a decrease in link quality and a higher standing wave ratio, that requires more robust and hence less efficient power amplifier implementations. In this chapter, an automatic antenna tuner system for handheld applications is presented that uses two series reactances combined with three simple RF peak detectors to sense both reactive and real impedance mismatches. The control loop only requires low-frequency electronics which makes it low cost, low power and relatively easy to integrate. Measurements on a demonstrator system show correct behaviour for voltage standingwave ratio up to 10.
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