Tuned Radio Frequency

Receivers must provide the sensitivity and selectivity that permit full recovery of the original signal. Selectivity- Ability of a receiver to pick up weak signal Sensitivity-Ability of a receiver to select a signal of a desired frequency while rejecting those on closely adjacent frequencies

Sensitivity
A communication receivers sensitivity, or ability to pick up weak signals, is a function of overall gain, the factor by which an input signal is multiplied to produce the output signal. The higher the gain of a receiver, the better its sensitivity. The more gain that a receiver has, the smaller the input signal necessary to produce a desired level of output. High gain in receivers is obtained by using multiple amplification stages.

 This is a fixed frequency receiver Its construction is simple. It has high sensitivity.

 In the tuned radio frequency (TRF) receiver sensitivity is improved by adding a number of stages of RF amplification between the antenna and detector, followed by stages of audio amplification. The RF amplifier stages increase the amplitude /gain before it is applied to the detector. The recovered signal is amplified further by audio amplifiers, which provide sufficient gain to operate a loudspeaker.

Disadvantages of TRF
Instablity Insufficient adjacent-frequency rejection Bandwidth variation Difficult to operate at higher frequencies

Bandwidth variation
Consider a tuned circuit required to have a bandwidth of 10KHz at a frequency of 535KHz.The Q of this circuit must be Q=f/f= 535/10=53.5.At the other end of the broadcast band,i.e. at 1640KHz,the Q of the coil should in theory have increased by a factor of 164.But in practice it is difficult to make circuit for Q =164 due to various losses.Thus the quality factor at 1640khz is unlikely to be in excess of 120, so giving the bandwidth of f=1640/120=13.7khz and ensuring that the receiver will pick up adjacent stations as well as the one to which it is tuned.

Difficult to Operate in higher frequencies

If TRF receiver is required to tune to 36.5MHz,the calculated Q if we take the bandwidth of 10kHz is 36500/10=3650 which is difficult to obtain.

Adjacent Channel Selectivity

If this adjacent channel selectivity is poor then it means that the receiver does not select different adjacent signals very well. Consider a receiver at HF,having an IF of 455kHz.If there is a strong station at 14.7MHz,the receiver will naturally pick it up.When it does,the local oscillator frequency will be 15.155MHz.When the receiver is tuned to second frequency,its local oscillator will be adjusted to 14.245MHz.Since this is exactly 455kHz below the frequency of the strong station,the two signals will produce 455KHz below the frequency of the strong station,the two signals will produce 455kHz when they are mixed,and the IF amplifier will not reject this signal. If there had been an RF amlpifier,the 14.7MHz signal have been rejected before reaching the mixer,but without an RF amplifier this receiver can not adequately reject 14.7Mhz when it is tuned to 13.79Mhz.

Superheterodyne Receiver

 The superheterodyne receiver is a receiver which uses the principle of frequency mixing or heterodyning to convert the received signal to a lower "intermediate" frequency, that can be more conveniently processed than the original radio carrier frequency

Block Diagram
Antenna Converter (Multiplier) b(t)

RF Stage
a(t) (radio frequency) RF Amplifier & RF BPF

IF Stage
d(t) (intermediate frequency) IF Amplifier & IF BPF e(t)

Envelope Detector
f(t) Diode, Capacitor, Resistor, & DC blocker

Audio Stage
Power amplifier

X
c(t)

g(t)

Local Oscillator
Ganged RF BPF and Oscillator cos[(c+IF)t]

RF Amplifier
The antenna picks up the weak radio signal and feeds it to the RF amplifier provide some initial gain and selectivity and are sometimes called preselectors. Pick up desired station by tuning filter to right frequency band. RF amplifier is a wideband RF amplifier tunable from approximately 540khz to 1650khz(standard commercial AM band)

Local Oscillator
The frequency of the local oscillator used is fLO = fc + fIF (up-conversion) or fLO = fc - fIF (down-conversion) A constant frequency difference is maintained between the local oscilattor and the RF circuits normally through capacitance tuning ,in which all the capacitors are ganged together and operated in unison by one knob.

Mixing Principles
Mixers accept two inputs: The signal to be translated to another frequency is applied to one input, and the sine wave from a local oscillator is applied to the other input. Like an amplitude modulator, a mixer essentially performs a mathematical multiplication of its two input signals. The oscillator produces the carrier, and other is the input signal. The output contains not only the carrier signal but also sidebands formed when the local oscillator and input signal are mixed.

 If the receiver is tuned to 640khz. The local oscillator will generate a frequency of 1095khz(640khz+455khz) The mixer will mix the 1095khz and 640khz.This produces the following signals at the output. a) 1095khz b) 640khz c) 445 khz difference frequency d) 1735khz sum frequency

 If the receiver is tuned to 550khz the local oscillator (because of mechanical linking) will generate a frequency of 1005khz(always 455khz above the station carrier frequency).

IF Amplifiers The primary objective in the design of an IF stage is to obtain good selectivity. Rejection of adjacent unwanted frequencies

IF Amplifiers
The output of the mixer is an IF signal containing the same modulation that appeared on the input RF signal. The signal is amplified by one or more IF amplifier stages, and most of the gain is obtained in these stages. Selective tuned circuits provide fixed selectivity. Since the intermediate frequency is usually lower than the input frequency, IF amplifiers are easier to design and good selectivity is easier to obtain.

Demodulators
The highly amplified IF signal is finally applied to the demodulator, which recovers the original modulating information. The demodulator may be a diode detector (for AM), a quadrature detector (for FM), or a product detector (for SSB). The output of the demodulator is then usually fed to an audio amplifier.

Radio AM

Radio FM

Carrier range RF

0.535 1.605 MHz

88 108 MHz

IF

0.455 kHz

10.7 MHz

Bandwidth IF

10 kHz

200 kHz