ANTENNA

Overcome FM antenna design

challenges in portables
By Natalian Zhai
Silicon Laboratories Inc.

Frequency Modulated (FM) radio has been used for years in

high-fidelity music and speech
broadcasting, offering excellent
sound quality, signal robustness,
and noise immunity. Recently, FM
radio has witnessed an explosion
of interest from the market for its
applications in mobile and personal media players; however, the
traditional FM design approach
requires a long antenna, such as
a wired headphone, which limits
its usefulness for many users who
do not carry the wired headset.
Also, as wireless usage models
continue to be a growing trend in
portable devices, more customers can benefit from wire-free
FM radio reception using other
FM antennas while listening with
either a wireless headset or a
speaker output.
This article introduces an FM
radio receiver solution that enables the antenna to be integrated
or embedded inside the portable
device enclosure, making the
headphone cable optional. It
starts with the goal of maximising
sensitivity; follows with methods
for achieving the maximum sensitivity, including maximising efficiency at the resonant frequency,
maximising antenna size, and
maximising efficiency across the

Figure 1: Anatenna equivalent circuit

model.

FM band with a tunable matching

network. Finally, this article describes an implementation of the
tunable matching network.
Maximise sensitivity
Sensitivity can be defined as the
weakest signal that an FM receiver system can receive while
achieving a certain signal-tonoise ratio (SNR). It is an important parameter of FM receiving
system performance and is related to both signal and noise. The
received signal strength indicator
(RSSI) indicates only the RF signal
strength at a particular tuned frequency. It does not provide any
information about noise or signal
quality. The audio signal-to-noise
ratio (SNR) is perhaps a better
measure for comparing receiver
performance with different antennas. Therefore, maximising
SNR is essential for listeners to
experience good audio quality.
Antennas are the connection
between the RF electrical circuits
and electromagnetic waves. For
FM reception, an antenna is a
transducer that converts energy

Figure 2: Typical fixed resonance antenna performance in FM band.

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from electromagnetic waves to

a voltage that can be used by an
electrical circuit, such as a Low
Noise Amplifier (LNA). The sensitivity of an FM receiving system
is directly related to the electrical
voltage received by the internal
LNA. To maximise sensitivity, the
electrical voltage must be maximised.
There is a variety of antennas,
including headphone, stub, loop,
and chip antennas, on the market,
but all antennas can be analysed
using equivalent circuits. Figure 1
shows a generalised equivalent
antenna circuit model.

The resonant frequency is the

frequency at which the antenna
most efficiently converts an electromagnetic wave to voltage. The
antenna efficiency is the ratio,
of the power through Rrad to
the total power collected by the
antenna and can be written as
Rrad / Zant, where Zant is the impedance of the antenna with the
antenna resonance network. Zant
is written as:

In Figure 1, X can be either a capacitor or an inductor. The choice

of X is determined by the antenna
topology, where the value of the
reactance (inductive or capacitive)
is related to the antenna geometry.
The loss resistance, Rloss, is related
to the power dissipated in the
antenna as thermal energy. The
radiation resistance, Rrad is related
to the voltage generated from the
electromagnetic wave. For simplicity, we will analyse the loop antenna model in the remainder of
this article. Similar calculations can
be made for other antenna types,
such as the short monopole and
headphone antennas.

When the antenna is resonated, the efficiency, , can be

written as:

Maximise efficiency
In order to maximise energy from
the antenna, a resonant network
is used to cancel out the reactive
impedance of the antenna, which
would otherwise attenuate the
amount of voltage the antenna
transfers to the internal LNA. For
an inductive loop antenna, a capacitor, Cres, is used to resonate
the antenna at the desired frequency:

At other frequencies:

At frequencies other than the

resonant frequency, res, the antenna efficiency, , is lower than
the maximum efficiency, res,
since the antenna input impedance, Zant, is either capacitive or
inductive.
Maximise antenna size
To recover a transmitted radio
signal, the antenna must collect
as much energy as possible from
the electromagnetic wave and
efficiently convert it into voltage
through Rrad. The amount of
energy collected is limited by the
available space and size of antennas used in portable devices. For
traditional headphone antennas,
it can be as long as a quarter
wavelength of the FM signal,

which collects sufficient energy

to convert to a voltage that can
be used by the internal LNA.
Consequently, it is less important
to maximise the efficiency of the
antenna.
The space allowed for an embedded FM antenna is limited
because portable devices are getting smaller and thinner. It is still
important to maximise antenna
size, but the energy collected by
an embedded antenna is small.
Therefore, to use smaller antennas
without sacrificing performance,
improving antenna efficiency, ,
becomes very important.
FM band with tunable
matching network
In most countries, the FM broadcast band is in the frequency
range of 87.5 to 108.0 MHz. In
Japan, the FM broadcast band
is 76 to 90 MHz, and, in some
eastern European countries, the
FM broadcast band is 65.8 to
74 MHz. To accommodate all
FM bands worldwide, a 40 MHz
bandwidth is required for an FM
receive system. Traditional solutions usually tune the antenna at
the centre frequency in the FM
band. However, as shown in the
above equations, the efficiency
of the antenna system is a function of frequency and reaches
its maximum at the resonant
frequency, dropping as the frequency is moved away from the
resonant frequency. Again, since
the worldwide FM band can be
as wide as 40 MHz, antenna efficiency can decrease significantly
at frequencies far from the resonant frequency.
For example, setting a fixed
resonant frequency of 98 MHz
gives good efficiency at this frequency point, but efficiency at
other frequencies drops significantly, degrading FM performance
the further one moves from the
resonant frequency.
Figure 2 shows an efficiency
plot for two antennas (a headphone antenna and a short antenna) with fixed resonance at the
centre of the band (98 MHz).
From the above graph, 98 MHz
achieves the best efficiency, but

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the efficiency degrades closer to

the band edges. This is not a significant issue for the headphone
antenna since the antenna is
large enough to collect sufficient
electromagnetic energy to transfer a significant voltage to the RF
receiver across the whole band;
however, the short antenna is
small and collects less energy
compared to a longer headphone
antenna, and the efficiency also
rolls off faster as the frequency
moves away from resonance. This
can present a problem for reception at the band edges using fixed
resonance. This is primarily due
to the fact that a short antenna
will likely have a higher Q than
a headphone, resulting in the
sharper drop at the band edges.
The quality factor, Q, is proportional to the energy stored in the
antenna network to the energy
lost or radiated, per unit time. For
the above antenna equivalent
circuit with an antenna resonated
network, Q follows below:

Figure 3: A conceptual block diagram of an enhanced FM receiver

architecture.

A headphone antenna has

inherently higher radiation resistance, Rrad, than a short antenna
due to its larger geometry, resulting in a lower Q than the short antenna. The issue of efficiency rolloff is very pronounced with the
short high-Q antennas required
for embedded implementations.
The antennas Q is also related
to the bandwidth of the antenna.
This relationship is given as:

where c is the resonant

frequency, and BW is the 3 dB
bandwidth of the antenna. A short
high-Q antenna has a smaller BW
compared to a long headphone
antenna and increases losses at
the band edges.
To overcome the bandwidth
limitations of a high-Q, fixedresonance antenna, a self-tuning

Figure 4: Tunable resonance benefits.

resonant circuit is used to change

fixed resonance to tuned
resonance so that the circuit is
always at the resonant frequency
for maximum sensitivity. A higher
SNR is achieved with a self-tuning
resonant antenna because the

gain from the resonant antenna

lowers the system noise figure
of the receiver, and the inherent
high Q of the embedded antenna
helps filter interference that could
mix with harmonics of the local
oscillator.

Implement tunable
matching network
Figure 3 shows a conceptual
block diagram of an enhanced
FM receiver architecture used
to support a short embedded
antenna. The tuned resonance
is implemented using an on-chip
tunable varactor and tuning algorithm.
The design utilises a mixed-signal, digital, low-IF architecture with
a digital signal processor (DSP)
to implement advanced signal
processing algorithms including
self-tuning of short embedded
antennas. The antenna algorithm
automatically adjusts the capacitance value of the varactor with

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each frequency tune of the device

for best performance.
For example, if the user tunes
to 101.1 MHz (station 1 in Figure 4),
the antenna algorithm will tune
the antenna circuit resonance to
101.1 MHz, thus optimising the
efficiency of the antenna and the
resulting Rx performance at 101.1
MHz. When the user tunes to 84.1
MHz (station 2 in Figure 4), the
antenna algorithm will retune the
antenna circuit resonance such
that it is optimised at 84.1 MHz.
Tuning the antenna resonance
with the tuned frequency maximises the received signal strength
across the entire FM band by providing the maximum efficiency at

each given frequency. As a result

of tuned resonance, performance
using an embedded antenna
is improved across the band.
Resonating the antenna at the
desired frequency also attenuates
interference at other frequencies,
significantly increasing the selectivity of the receiver. As a result,
consumers using this receiver
with an embedded antenna will
have less interference from unwanted sources. This is extremely
important in urban areas with
congested FM frequency bands.
Summary
As wireless usage models become
more popular in portable devices,

more customers are demanding wire-free FM radio reception

with embedded antennas while
listening with either a wireless
headset or a speaker output. This
paper discussed the goal of maximising sensitivity to improve FM
reception using an embedded
antenna and further discussed
the methods to achieve that goal.
Based on the limited space available in portable devices for embedded antennas, a self-tuned
resonant network maximises the
sensitivity of the receiver over the
FM band and keeps the short antenna at maximum efficiency on
each frequency.