Statistical Methodology to Relocate Resonance Frequencies of Software Defined Radio Antennas

Abstract

Software Defined Radio (SDR) allows integrating different wireless communication standards such as GSM, Bluetooth, and ZigBee, using the same hardware. In this scenario the antenna should be able to operate at different frequency bands of the coexisting standards to maintain the SDR advantages and flexibility. This difficult task can be tackled through the use of matching networks (MN) circuits, which allow changing the antenna’s resonance frequency, without requiring significant redesign of the SDR platform. However, is particularly difficult to find a set of good MN components values when it is required to operate at multiple frequency bands because it is necessary to relocate multiple frequency resonances. For this reason in this paper, a statistical methodology based on a Design of Experiments (DOE) is proposed to model the SDR system response for obtaining the design values of the MN components that effectively relocate the antenna frequency resonances. Also this proposal allows minimizing the number of circuit simulations and in consequence, the design time. The proposed methodology is applied to adjust the frequency resonances of a commercial antenna and SDR system and the obtained results are validated experimentally showing its effectivity.