The 5th International Conference on Electrical Engineering and Informatics 2015

August 10-11, 2015, Bali, Indonesia

Development of High Sensitivity Amplier

for VLF Receiver Application
Kusnandar1 , Kusmadi2 , Asep Najmurrokhman1 , Sunubroto1 , Chairunnisa2 and Achmad Munir2
1

Department of Electrical Engineering

Faculty of Engineering, Universitas Jenderal Achmad Yani, Indonesia
2
Radio Telecommunication and Microwave Laboratory
School of Electrical Engineering and Informatics, Institut Teknologi Bandung, Indonesia
munir@ieee.org

AbstractIn this paper, the development of amplier based

on AD744 monolithic Op-Amp is proposed for VLF receiver
application. Due to the wide usage of very low frequency
(VLF) wave for research on natural phenomena, a VLF
receiver application particularly with high sensitivity is absolutely
required. The proposed VLF amplier which is intended to
produce high sensitivity for the frequency range of 10-30kHz
is designed to have an output connectable to the soundcard
of personal computer for further data processing. After
achieving the optimum design, the hardware realization is then
implemented on a printed circuit board (PCB). From the
measurement result, it shows that the sensitivity is almost linear
for the input signal lower than -12dBm and becoming quadratic
for the input signal higher than -12dBm.
KeywordsHigh sensitivity; Op-Amp; amplier; very low
frequency (VLF) receiver.

I.

I NTRODUCTION

As is well-known, long distance communication using very

low frequency (VLF) is very important. Basically the VLF
wave, also known as myriametre wave, is produced by a
variety of natural phenomena. One of the phenomena that
dominantly generates VLF wave in nature is lightning where
the impulse travels along the magnetic eld lines of earth
from one hemisphere to the other. The VLF wave can also
be excited electronically for numerous applications such as
for government radio station and military communication that
require high security level [1] [2]. Several radio transmitters
operate throughout the world in the VLF range, i.e. 15-30kHz,
and are used mainly for marine navigation, communication
with submersed submarines, and other purposes [3]. At large
distances from the transmitter, the electromagnetics (EM) eld
is effectively planar and horizontal. A conductor that strikes
in direction of the transmitter is cut by the magnetic vector,
and these primary magnetic elds cause electric currents to
ow in subsurface conductors. Furthermore, the VLF wave is
also applied for weather observation and research that involves
EM wave. Atmospheric, Weather, Electromagnetic System for
Observation, Modeling, and Education (AWESOME) is one of
the research projects that has VLF transmitter spread around
the world [4] [7].
This work is partially supported by the 2014 Collaboration between HEIs
Research Grant (Hibah PEKERTI 2014) Contract No. 1107/K4/KM/2014
from the Directorate General of Higher Education, Ministry of Culture and
Education, the Republic of Indonesia.

The VLF radio spectrum extends from 3-30kHz. The wave

which is in the VLF radio spectrum has a capability to achieve
very long distance and is easily affected by the condition
of ionosphere. However, standard communications receivers
do not receive signals that low in such frequency, whilst
the use of common antennas will not be effective due to
the dimension of its wavelength which ranges from 10km
to 100km. Furthermore, most antennas used with standard
communications receivers are optimized for higher frequency
regions and perform poorly in the VLF radio spectrum.
Therefore, few radio amateurs or shortwave listeners have
ever heard VLF signals and most known very little about
the large number of stations in that part of radio spectrum.
Meanwhile, to compensate an unavoidable matter inuenced
by natural phenomena, a high performance equipment of VLF
communication is denitely required.
Some researchers work on seismo-electromagnetic eld
have utilized recently the VLF/LF wave associated with
earthquake as detected by the sub-ionospheric radio signal
for earthquake precursor [8] [10]. Moreover, reliability of
communication by using VLF wave is certainly important so
that the research related VLF/LF wave can be run properly.
In order to maintain the reliability of communication using
VLF wave, an amplier works on radio frequency (RF) is one
of the essential devices required for the communication. It is
signicant to ensure that the VLF signal arriving at the receiver
can be processed further without defecting the information
contained inside the signal. Thus, the amplier with high
sensitivity will be required to support the transceiver system
in the VLF communication.
In this paper, a high sensitivity amplier for VLF receiver
application is proposed to be investigated for designing,
realizing and characterizing. The proposed amplier which is
intended to work at frequency range of 10-30kHz employs high
sensitivity AD744 monolithic Op-Amp as a main component
to achieve the required specication. The VTX transmitter
at India which works at frequency of 18.2kHz and NWC
transmitter at Australia which has operating frequency of
19.8kHz will be used as a basis on the development of VLF
receiver. Further, the amplier is expected to have high gain
along the desired frequency range. Hence, gain and sensitivity
will be more focused in the development process. In addition,
the amplier is also designed to be equipped with a socket
connectable to the soundcard of personal computer.

c
978-1-4673-7319-7/15/$31.00 2015
IEEE

328

II.

TABLE I.

B RIEF OVERVIEW OF A MPLIFIER D ESIGN

VALUES OF SOME COMPONENTS FOR VARIOUS GAINS AND

LOAD CONDITIONS

In the design of amplier for VLF receiver application,

there are several parameters that should be paid attention
including gain, noise gure and sensitivity. Among those
parameters, in this paper the st and the last parameters, i.e.
gain and sensitivity, will be paid more attention due to their
important roles to acquire the required specication. To achieve
the objectives, a monolithic operational amplier (Op-Amp) of
AD744 is employed in the design of high sensitivity amplier.
The use of AD744 monolithic Op-Amp as a front-end
component of amplier is based on consideration that the
AD744 offers the excellent dc characteristics with enhanced
settling, slew rate, and bandwidth. It also provides the option of
using custom compensation to achieve exceptional capacitive
load drive capability. The AD744 is internally compensated for
stable operation as a unity gain inverter or as a non-inverting
amplier with a gain of two or greater [11].

7
()

8
()

Slew rate
(V/S)

-3dB BW
(MHz)

4.99k

4.99k

50

75

2.5

4.99k

4.99k

150

37

2.3

4.99k

4.99k

1000

14

1.2

499

4.99k

11

270

75

1.2

499

4.99k

11

390

50

0.85

499

4.99k

11

1000

37

0.60

TABLE II.

The schematic diagram of proposed amplier for VLF

receiver developed using an AD744 monolithic Op-Amp is
shown in Fig. 1. A voltage follower with gain of amplier is
implemented in which the gain is determined from the ratio
of 8 and 7 . To achieve a stable operation with external
compensation for a capacitive load, 10 is connected in parallel
with 8 . Table I tabulates the recommended values of 7 , 8
and 10 along with expected slew rates and bandwidths (BW)
for a variety of gains and load conditions [11]. Whilst the
value of each component for proposed schematic diagram is
summarized in Table II. Furthermore, the input of amplier is
obtained from the antenna which is coupled with 9 that also
acts as a lowpass lter to avoid the interference of dc current.
The schematic diagram also shows that 1 and 2 connected
to lters are applied to protect the amplier from surge
voltages coming from input signals. To work properly, the
amplier is biased using symmetrical voltage obtained from
a dc-dc converter of NMH1215S [12].

10
(pF)

Gain

VALUE OF EACH COMPONENT FOR SCHEMATIC DIAGRAM

Capacitor (F)

Resistor ()

100n

4k7

Diode
1N4148

10

10k

1N4148

100n

4k7

10

10k

100n

10M

10

100M

100n

500

10

10k

100n

4k7

10

470p

10

220

11

100p

12

100n

13

10

14

100n

15

10

16

33n

Based on a cross-coupled electronically balanced topology,

the SSM2142 mimics the performance of fully balanced
transformer-based solutions for line driving. However, the
SSM2142 maintains lower distortion and occupies much less
board space than transformers while achieving comparable
common-mode rejection performance with reduced parts count
[13]. An output signal obtained from the SSM2142 balanced
line driver is then fed into the audio transformer of A262A2E
where its output is connectable to the soundcard of personal
computer for further data processing.

Moreover, the output of AD744 monolithic Op-Amp is

then buffered using a balanced line driver of SSM2142 to
obtain a balanced output signal pair with high output drive.
The SSM2142 is chosen due to its performance in the
solution of fully balance transformer-based for line driving.

A262A2E
C1

C2

C3

C4

Pri1

R2

R1

+15V

R9

AD744
Pri2

D1

SSM2142

C9

from ANTENNA

2
D2

-15V

R8
C10

C5

C6

C7

C8

R4

R5

R6

C11

5
C14

4
3

R3

to PC SOUNDCARD

C13

+15V

-15V

Sec1

C12

Sec2

NMH1215S
+15V

0V
GND -15V

C15

R10

PC GROUND

0V

Vin

C16

LM7805CT
Vin

Out +5V

+5V
GND

R7
BATTERY12V

Fig. 1.

Schematic diagram of proposed amplier for VLF receiver based on AD744 monolithic Op-Amp equipped with SSM2142 balanced line driver

329

10

H ARDWARE R EALIZATION AND M EASUREMENT

The gain of realized amplier shown in Fig. 4 is measured

with input signal from a signal generator varied from -30dBm
up to 0dBm, meanwhile the sensitivity depicted in Fig. 5
is characterized by setting input signal generator for some
different frequencies. In the sensitivity measurement, the input
and output signals are measured at 10kHz, 17kHz, 18kHz,
19kHz, 20kHz, and 30kHz. From the measured gain plotted in
Fig. 4, it is seen that the gain performance of realized amplier
has satised the requirement for frequency range of 10-30kHz

8
Gain (dB)

After achieving the optimum design, the hardware

realization is implemented on a PCB for experimental
characterization. Fig. 2 shows the layout diagram of PCB
and its component placement for the realization. While Fig.
3 shows the picture of realized amplier for VLF receiver
application on a PCB with the dimension of 64mm (length)
56.7mm (width). The measurement is carried out by using
a signal generator and a spectrum analyzer to characterize
some parameters of realized amplier including the gain and
sensitivity for the frequency range of 10-30kHz. It is noticeable
that the range of frequency above is chosen to be suit with the
real application. The measured results are plotted in Figs. 4
and 5 for gain and sensitivity, respectively.

Vin 0dBm
Vin -1dBm
Vin -5dBm

0
10

15

Vin -8dBm
Vin -21dBm
Vin -30dBm
20

25

30

Frequency (kHz)

Fig. 4.

Measured gain of realized amplier for VLF receiver application

12
10
Output voltage (V)

III.

8
6

10kHz
17kHz
18kHz
19kHz
20kHz
30kHz

4
2
0
-30

-25

-20
-15
-10
Input signal (dBm)

-5

Fig. 5. Measured sensitivity of realized amplier for VLF receiver application

(a) top layer

(b) bottom layer

Fig. 2. Layout diagram of printed circuit board and its component placement

Fig. 3.

with the maximum gain of 8dB for the input signal around
-5dBm. It shows that the gain of realized amplier tends to
be linear for the input signal above than -8dBm and becomes
lower for the input signal less than -8dBm. Although there is
some uctuation of output signal in the frequency range below
15kHz for the input signal of -8dBm, in general the gain of
realized amplier is almost at for various frequency ranges
of input signal.
Furthermore, the sensitivity of realized amplier plotted
in Fig. 5 seems almost linear for the input signal lower
than -12dBm and is becoming quadratic for higher than
-12dBm. This is in contrast with the measured gain for the
same range of input signal which is probably evoked by
the basic characteristic of Op-Amp itself. From the result it
can be inferred that the sensitivity of realized amplier is
invulnerable as the variation of input signal frequency where
it is a benecial for some uctuating frequency in VLF signal.
The result shows that the input signal less than -25dBm
around frequency range of 18-20kHz is still detectable by
the receiver which is indicating high sensitivity of realized
amplier. Therefore, it can be concluded that the realized
receiver is implementable for receiving VLF signal such as
from VTX or NWC transmitters.

Picture of realized amplier for VLF receiver application

330

IV.

C ONCLUSION

A high sensitivity amplier constructed based on AD744

monolithic Op-Amp has been developed for VLF receiver
application. The realized amplier has been implemented on a
PCB and measured experimentally for characterizing gain and
sensitivity. It has been shown that the gain performance of
realized amplier has satised the requirement for frequency
range of 10-30kHz. Meanwhile the measured sensitivity is high
enough to receive the small input signal. In addition, although
the measurements have been still conducted in the laboratory
instead of eld measurements; however the measured results
have shown that the realized amplier is applicable for VLF
receiver application.
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