single-ended, or unbalanced, signals is necessary, in particular

A CMOS SUBHARMONIC MIXER WITH when interfacing with off-chip components in multichip modules.
INPUT AND OUTPUT ACTIVE BALUNS Since the Gilbert-cell relies on differential signals, baluns must be
Brad R. Jackson and Carlos E. Saavedra
used to perform this conversion if single-ended signals are used.
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering CMOS subharmonic mixers are presented in Refs. 5–7; however,
718 Walter Light Hall only simulation results are shown, and conversion between bal-
Queen’s University anced and unbalanced signals is not discussed. In this work, the
Kingston, ON K7L 3N60, Canada design and measured results of a CMOS subharmonic mixer that
uses active baluns at the input and at the output is presented.
Received 28 April 2006 Section 2 will discuss the subcircuits in the proposed design,
Section 3 details the measured results, and Section 4 concludes the
ABSTRACT: A CMOS 0.18 ␮m subharmonic mixer is experimentally paper.
demonstrated that uses active baluns at the local oscillator (LO) and RF
inputs, as well as at the output. With this subharmonic mixer, a 2.1 GHz
2. CIRCUIT IMPLEMENTATION
RF input and a 1.0 GHz LO input produce a 100 MHz output signal.
The conversion gain is 8 dB, the LO and RF input reflection coeffi-
2.1. Subharmonic Mixer Core
cients are better than ⫺10 dB, and IIP3 is ⫺8.5 dBm. © 2006 Wiley
Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 48: 2472–2478, 2006; The core of the subharmonic mixer is shown in Figure 2, which is
Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). based on the Gilbert-cell topology [10]. Gilbert-cell mixers, in
DOI 10.1002/mop.21957 general, have high isolation between ports due to their double-
balanced structure. Corresponding to the block diagram in Figure
Key words: RF CMOS; subharmonic mixer; active balun; MMIC; di- 1, the circuit requires RF inputs with relative phase shifts of 0° and
rect conversion receiver 180°, and LO inputs of 0°, 90°, 180°, and 270°. With this topology,
first proposed in [3], the currents I1 and I2 are effectively switched
1. INTRODUCTION at twice the LO frequency, which is the mechanism that results in
During the past several years there has been considerable interest subharmonic mixing. For insight into how the LO frequency is
in direct conversion receivers. The primary advantage in using doubled, consider the circuit in Figure 3. Since the LO input is
direct conversion is that there is no image frequency produced, and generally a large signal, the MOSFETs will turn on and off
consequently much simpler and inexpensive filters can be used. corresponding to the amplitude of the voltages at their gates. As
However, direct conversion receivers have disadvantages such as the 0° LO signal rises well above the threshold value, transistor M5
local oscillator (LO), self-mixing at the receiver that can seriously turns fully on, causing I1 to increase and flow predominately
degrade the performance of a receiver through increased noise and through M5, since the gate voltage at M6 is 180° out of phase and
intermodulation distortion [1]. To combat this problem, several therefore near the minimum (cutoff). When the amplitude of the 0°
techniques have been suggested such as the use of a frequency LO signal begins to drop and the 180° LO amplitude begins to rise,
doubler at the output of the LO [2] and the use of a subharmonic neither transistor is fully on and, as a result, the current I1 de-
mixer [3–7]. With a subharmonic mixer, the LO frequency is creases. As the 180° LO signal nears its maximum and the 0° LO
effectively doubled, thus producing mixing components from the nears its minimum, M6 is turned fully on and M5 is turned off,
RF frequency and double the LO frequency. The ability to use an meaning that the current I1 increases and flows through M6. By the
LO with half the frequency that would have been otherwise re- end of the cycle, neither the 0° nor the 180° LO signals are at a
quired can simplify the LO design and improve the performance. maximum and the current I1 decreases again. Therefore, during
At very high-frequencies in particular, it may be difficult to design one period of the LO signal, I1 has two cycles of increasing and
an LO with the required output power and phase noise, which decreasing current, thus indicating a doubling of the LO frequency.
could make the subharmonic mixing technique attractive for ap- The same operation occurs for the other LO transistor pair (90° and
plications other than in direct-conversion receivers. Many mixers 270°) and the resulting current, I2, is 180° out of phase with I1.
rely on a Gilbert-cell [8, 9]. Modifications to this topology were Therefore, mixing will occur at the RF frequency and twice the
shown in Refs. 3 and 4 to realize a subharmonic mixer where four input LO frequency.
LO signals are used with relative phase shifts of 0°, 90°, 180°, and To improve the linearity of the mixer, source degeneration was
270° to effectively provide switching at twice the rate of the used. This allows an increase in the amplitude of the input signal,
traditional Gilbert-cell. A block diagram of the subharmonic mixer but has the penalty of reducing the conversion gain. Resistive
using this technique is shown in Figure 1. Often, the use of degeneration was used in this work rather than inductive because
it requires significantly less silicon space and because it does not
have a frequency dependence. As a result, a more compact layout
of the circuit can be obtained compared to implementations with
inductive degeneration. However, with resistive degeneration the
noise figure of the mixer will be increased somewhat. The output
of the mixer is taken differentially between the drains of M1 and
M4.

2.2. RF and LO Input Baluns

In many cases it is necessary to convert an unbalanced (single-
ended) signal to a balanced (differential) signal and vice versa.
Passive on-chip baluns for RF and microwave frequencies can
consume a large area specifically at lower frequencies. For this
Figure 1 Subharmonic mixer concept (output shown for downconverter reason, baluns are often realized off-chip, which adds to assembly
case) costs and may degrade the conversion gain/loss. It is possible to

2472 MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 48, No. 12, December 2006 DOI 10.1002/mop
 Figure 2 Core circuit of the subharmonic mixer

use transmission line baluns on-chip, but since their size is pro- the drain has (ideally) a 180° phase-shift relative to the input,
portional to wavelength they are not economically feasible except whereas V01 has the same phase as the input. Of course, this basic
possibly at millimeter-wave frequencies (⬎30 GHz). Several tech- structure has limitations at high frequencies due to the parasitic
niques exist to perform the balun operation using active compo- elements associated with the transistor. In particular, the gate-drain
nents. The simplest active balun is a FET with resistors in the drain parasitic capacitance, Cgd, seriously degrades the performance at
and the source as shown in Figure 4 [11]. By properly choosing the high frequencies since the input signal can feed through this
value of these resistors, the amplitude of the two outputs can be capacitance directly to the output. Two techniques that have im-
made equal. Specifically, there is approximately unity gain at V01 proved performance are the differential pair and the cascaded
(i.e. V01/VIN ⬇ 1) since it is a follower circuit. Therefore, to have common-gate/common-source (CG-CS) [12], shown in Figures 5
equivalent output amplitude at V02, a design equation can be easily and 6, respectively. The differential pair circuit ultimately has a
obtained for the resistors R1 and R2 to a first-order approximation similar frequency limitation as the circuit in Figure 4 by consid-
with V02 /VIN ⫽ ⫺ R1 /共R2 ⫹ 1/gm兲 ⫽ ⫺ 1 and R1 ⫽ R2 ering the parasitics in the half-equivalent circuit. Several other
⫹ 1/gm. The negative sign in V02/VIN indicates that the output at active balun circuits have been proposed [13, 14]; however, the
CG-CS pair of Figure 6 was chosen in this work, which has an
advantage over the differential pair in that active input matching is
possible, although its performance is more sensitive to process
variations. It is desirable to have a low input reflection coefficient
so that the input power will be absorbed by the circuit, and not
reflected. Since the input impedance to the gate of a FET is
typically very high due to its large capacitive component, the input
reflection coefficient to a CS device, or a differential pair, is
generally poor. In contrast, the input impedance to a CG device is
approximately 1/gm. Therefore, an appropriate selection of device
size and biasing can yield a 50 ⍀ input impedance, as desired.
Since the input impedance of the CG device is in parallel with the
very high input impedance of the CS transistor, the resulting input
impedance is approximately that of the CG transistor. This is a
significant advantage over other topologies that do not have an
Figure 3 LO transistor pair used to double the LO frequency acceptable input reflection coefficient. In these instances, a match-

DOI 10.1002/mop MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 48, No. 12, December 2006 2473
 Figure 5 Differential pair as a balun

in Figure 8 with relative phase shifts indicated at the output for

clarity. Using a reference 0° phase of an LO input signal, the phase
shift at the outputs in Figure 8 would be ⫺45°, 45°, 135°, and 225°
from top output to bottom relative to the input phase.

Figure 4 Single FET balun 2.3. Output Balun

At the output of the subharmonic mixer the signal is differential.
To convert to a single-ended signal at this point is very convenient
using an active balun since in this case the frequency of the signal
ing network must be implemented using passive devices such as
transmission lines, or inductors and capacitors. In this case, the
area needed will be much larger and the input matching response
will generally not be as broadband as with a CG device, although
the reflection coefficient could possibly be lower. The resistor, Rb,
is large enough that it has a very small impact on the input
reflection coefficient. The gate of transistor M1 is biased at Vdd
(1.8 V) and the gate of M2 is biased by at voltage set by the drop
across Rb (which is determined by the current through M1).
The balun used for the input RF port was simulated indepen-
dently in the Spectre simulator using a Cadence extracted layout
that included parasitic capacitances and source-follower buffers at
the outputs. The amplitude and phase balance are shown in Figure
7. The difference in amplitude of the two outputs less than 0.1 dB
over the range from 1.0 to 3.0 GHz and the phase difference is less
than about 3°.
For this circuit to operate as a subharmonic mixer there must be
four LO signals with relative phase shifts of 0°, 90°, 180°, and
270°. The LO input active balun generates the 0° and 180° signals,
therefore an additional technique must by used to generate the
quadrature signals. A straight-forward technique to create the 90°
phase shifts is with resistor– capacitor polyphase filters. RC-CR
quadrature generators are a narrow-band solution with an accuracy
that is dependent on the process tolerances. The networks were
designed to create a phase shift of ⫾45° at 1 GHz by using a
resistance value of Rp ⫽ 320 ⍀ and a capacitor, Cp ⫽ 0.5 pF. The
complete LO input circuit with balun and phase shifters is shown Figure 6 Cascaded common-gate/common-source balun

2474 MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 48, No. 12, December 2006 DOI 10.1002/mop
 Figure 9 Output balun and buffer
Figure 7 CG-CS balun amplitude and phase balance simulations from
extracted layout circuit using Cadence Virtuoso and Spectre simulator
through the balun due to the reduced performance of the differen-
tial pair at high-frequencies, thus providing a minor amount of
filtering.
is relatively low at 100 MHz. In fact, given the low-frequency of
the signal, an active balun is even more attractive than a passive 2.4. Complete Circuit
balun due to the much smaller size of the circuit. A differential- The layout for the complete circuit required an area of ⬃600 ⫻
pair with a single-ended output connected to a source follower 700 ␮m2 (0.42 mm2) including bonding pads and ⬃400 ⫻ 500
accomplishes the desired goal. This output balun circuit with ␮m2 (0.2 mm2) for the circuit excluding bonding pads. The
buffer is shown in Figure 9. The differential pair was designed so layout is relatively compact, which can be attributed to the fact
it would perform as a balun with unity gain. Therefore, the single- that there are no inductors in the design. Commonly, inductors
ended output signal from the differential pair has the same ampli- are required as part of an input matching network to improve
tude as the balanced signal at the output of the mixer. Of course, input reflection coefficient. In this case, since the active baluns
high harmonic frequency components will be attenuated somewhat were designed to have good input matching, inductors, or an

Figure 8 LO input balun and quadrature phase shifters

DOI 10.1002/mop MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 48, No. 12, December 2006 2475
 Figure 12 RF input reflection coefficient
Figure 10 Output IF (100 MHz) power versus RF input power at 2.1
GHz (LO power ⫽ ⫺10 dBm at 1 Ghz)

off-chip matching network can be avoided. As aforementioned, compression point occurs at an input RF power of approxi-
degeneration resistors were used rather than inductors to im- mately ⫺13 dBm. The measurements match the simulation
prove the linearity, but require significantly less space on the results closely. To find the optimal LO power that provides the
integrated circuit. maximum conversion gain, the RF input power was held con-
stant while the LO power was swept from ⫺20 to 0 dBm. Figure
3. MEASURED RESULTS 11 shows that the gain increases relatively linearly with increas-
To measure the subharmonic mixer, coplanar waveguide probes ing LO power until around ⫺10 dBm at which point the
were used to contact the on-chip pads and a Rohde & Schwarz conversion gain is ⬃8 dB. From the spectrum data it was found
FS300 spectrum analyzer was used to measure the output power that an LO power of ⫺10 dBm provides the maximum conver-
of the various harmonics. The power supply voltage for the sion gain while suppressing all undesired harmonics by at least
circuit, VDD, was set to 1.8 V. To measure the conversion gain 25 dB. A full two-port calibration was performed using a
of the mixer, the LO was set to a frequency of 1 GHz and a calibration substrate and an HP 8510C network analyzer was
power of ⫺10 dBm. A 2.1 GHz RF input was used and its used to measure the input reflection coefficients. Measurements
power was swept from approximately ⫺30 to ⫺5 dBm. The were performed for the input matching of both the RF and the
output power at (2.1 ⫺ 2 ⫻ 1.0) GHz ⫽ 100 MHz was observed LO ports. The S11 for the RF input is shown in Figure 12. It is
and the measured and simulated results are shown in Figure 10. clear that the active input balun provides good matching with an
From this figure, the conversion gain is ⬃8 dB and, the 1-dB input reflection coefficient less than ⫺10 dB at 2.1 GHz.
Similarly, the LO input reflection coefficient, shown in Figure
13, is approximately ⫺11 dB at the LO frequency of 1 GHz.

Figure 11 Conversion gain versus LO power (RF power ⫽ ⫺20 dBm) Figure 13 LO input reflection coefficient

2476 MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 48, No. 12, December 2006 DOI 10.1002/mop
The slight difference between the RF and the LO input match-
ing is due to minor differences in the active balun circuits that
allows a lower input reflection coefficient at the operational
frequency of the LO at the expense of higher power consump-
tion. The third-order intercept point (IP3) was measured by
using a two-tone RF input signal with frequencies of 2.1 and
2.11 GHz. This produced third-order intermodulation products
at 90 and 120 MHz. The results shown in Figure 14 indicate an
IIP3 of ⫺8.5 dBm and an OIP3 of ⫺0.5 dBm. The measured
double sideband (DSB) noise figure is ⬃20 dB, due primarily to
the input baluns rather than the mixer core circuit. The noise
figure could be reduced by modifying the input baluns to
eliminate the bias resistor Rb, or by using another balun topol-
ogy. The power consumption for the circuit, including input and
output baluns, the mixer core, as well as the output buffer, is 36
mW. A microphotograph of the chip is shown in Figure 15.

4. CONCLUSION
A CMOS 0.18 ␮m subharmonic mixer was demonstrated that
uses active input and output baluns to generate differential
signals from single-ended, and vice versa. This configuration
could be used as part of a direct conversion receiver where Figure 15 Microphotograph of subharmonic mixer with input and out-
single-ended inputs and outputs are required or in a super put active baluns. [Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is
heterodyne receiver where a lower LO frequency is desired. By available at www.interscience.wiley.com]
using a subharmonic mixer, the LO frequency is designed to
have half the frequency that would be required with a funda-
mental mixer. Consequently, the design of the LO can possibly
be simplified and improved performance can result due to the
reduced oscillation frequency. The RF input frequency was 2.1
REFERENCES
GHz and the LO frequency was 1.0 GHz, which results in an
output IF of 100 MHz. Active baluns at the RF and LO input 1. D. Manstretta, M. Brandolini, and F. Svelto, Second-order intermodu-
ports were designed to have active input matching and the lation mechanisms in CMOS downconverters, IEEE J Solid-State
measured results show input reflection coefficients of less than Circuits 38 (2003), 394 – 406.
⫺10 dB at the LO and RF operational frequencies. The 1-dB 2. R.G. Meyer, W.D. Mack, and J.J.E.M. Hageraats, A 2.5-GHz BiC-
compression point was found to occur at ⫺13 dBm RF input MOS transceiver for wireless LAN⬘s, IEEE J Solid-State Circuits 32
power and the conversion gain was ⬃8 dB. The circuit shows (1997), 2097–2104.
3. K. Nimmagadda and G. Rebeiz, A 1.9 GHz double-balanced subhar-
excellent suppression of the harmonics, as well as excellent
monic mixer for direct conversion receivers, In Proceedings of IEEE
isolation from feed-through of the RF and LO signals to the Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium, Phoenix, Arizona,
output. If a quadrature oscillator is used for the LO it could USA, May 20 –22, 2001, pp. 253–256.
eliminate the need for the passive RC-CR phase-shifters at the 4. Z. Zhaofeng, L. Tsui, C. Zhiheng, and J. Lau, A CMOS self-mixing-
output of the LO balun, and potentially improve performance free front-end for direct conversion applications, In Proceedings of
through the potential increase in phase accuracy. IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, Sydney,
Australia, May 6 –9, 2001, pp. 386 –389.
5. P. Upadhyaya, M. Rajashekharaiah, Y. Zhang, D. Heo, and Y.-J. Chen,
A 5 GHz novel 0.18 ␮m inductor-less CMOS sub-harmonic mixer, In
Proceedings of IEEE Fourth International Symposium on Information
Processing in Sensor Networks, Los Angeles, California, USA, April
15, 2005, pp. 71–74.
6. V. Krizhanovskii and S.-G. Lee, 0.18 ␮m CMOS sub-harmonic mixer
for 2.4 GHz IEEE 802.15.4 transceiver, In Proceedings of IEEE 14th
International Crimean Conference on Microwave and Telecommuni-
cation Technology, Sevastopol, Crimea, Ukraine, Sept. 13–17, 2004,
pp. 141–142.
7. P. Upadhyaya, M. Rajashekharaiah, and D. Heo, A 5.6 GHz CMOS
doubly balanced sub-harmonic mixer for direct conversion—Zero
IF receiver, In Proceedings of IEEE Workshop on Microelectronics
and Electron Devices, Boise, Idaho, USA, April 16, 2004, pp.
129 –130.
8. P.J. Sulivan, B.A. Xavier, and W.H. Ku, Low-voltage performance of
a microwave CMOS gilbert-cell mixer, IEEE J Solid-State Circuits 32
(1997), 1151–1155.
9. K.W. Hamed, A.P. Freundorfer, and Y.M.M. Antar, A monolithic
double-balanced direct conversion mixer with an integrated wideband
passive balun, IEEE J Solid-State Circuits 40 (2005), 622– 629.
10. B. Gilbert, A precise four-quadrant multiplier with subnanosecond
Figure 14 Third-order intercept point determination response, IEEE J Solid-State Circuits 3 (1968), 365–373.

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11. M. Goldfarb, J. B. Cole, and A. Platzker, A novel MMIC biphase overall antenna size is highly dependent upon the separation dis-
modulator with variable gain using enhancement-mode FETs suit- tance between two radiating elements, and larger antenna size is
able for 3 V wireless applications, In Proceedings of IEEE Micro- needed to achieve higher Tx/Rx isolation. In this paper, we present
wave and Millimeter-Wave Monolithic Circuits Symposium, San a novel design of a compact backscatter reader antenna with
Diego, CA, 1994, pp. 99 –102.
circular polarization (CP) and high Tx/Rx isolation. In practice, a
12. L.M. Devlin, B.J. Buck, J.C. Clifton, A.W. Dearn, and A.P. Long, A
CP reader antenna is highly desired to ensure tag visibility regard-
2.4 GHz single chip tranceiver, In Proceedings of IEEE Microwave
and Millimeter-Wave Monolithic Circuits Symposium, Atlanta, GA, less of tag orientation. Few papers have been reported on the CP
1993, pp. 23–26. antenna with high Tx/Rx isolation although many papers have
13. M. Kawashima, T. Nakagawa, and K. Araki, A novel broadband active been published on improving the isolation of the dual linearly-
balun, In Proceedings of IEEE 33rd European Microwave Conference, polarized antenna [3– 6].
Munich, Germany, Oct. 7, 2003, pp. 495– 498.
14. M. Rajashekharaiah and E. Chen, A new 0.25 ␮m CMOS on-chip
2. ANTENNA DESIGN AND RESULTS
active balun with gain controllability for 5 GHz DCR, In Proceedings
of IEEE Seventh International Conference on Solid-State and Inte- The geometry of the proposed reader antenna is shown in Figure
grated Circuits Technology, Beijing, China, Oct. 18 –21, 2004, Vol. 2, 1. The antenna consists of two dual-feed radiating patches fed
pp. 1295–1298. by branch-line hybrid couplers. The radiating patches are cir-
cular metal plates placed over the ground plane at a height of hp.
© 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Each branch-line coupler is printed on a thin PTFE substrate (
␧ r ⫽ 3.5, tan␦ ⫽ 0.0018) and inset between the radiating patch
and the ground plane. As shown in Figure 1, the ground body of
the proposed antenna is comprised of a pair of hexahedral
DESIGN OF COMPACT RFID READER cavities surrounding the radiating patches to reduce the mutual
ANTENNA WITH HIGH coupling between the patches. The cavities have a circular
TRANSMIT/RECEIVE ISOLATION aperture with the same size of the radiating patch in the
broadside direction. The overall size of the proposed antenna is
Hae-Won Son, Jung-Nam Lee, and Gil-Young Choi only W ⫻ L ⫻ H ⫽ 200 ⫻ 450 ⫻ 30 mm3, and this is very
RFID System Research Team
compact compared to commercially available RFID reader an-
Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI)
161 Gajeong-dong, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon 305–700, Korea tennas [2].
In Figure 1, two feed points (a, b) of the Tx patch are fed 90°
out of phase with respect to each other by the Tx coupler. There are
Received 1 May 2006
two possible Tx ports (T1, T2). The LHCP (left hand circular
polarization) wave is radiated when port T1 is used as a Tx port,
ABSTRACT: A radio frequency identification (RFID) reader antenna while the RHCP (right hand circular polarization) wave is radiated
with high transmit/receive isolation, which consists of two circularly- for port T2. In the same manner, two feed points (c, d) of the Rx
polarized radiating patches, is presented. The high isolation is patch are fed by the Rx coupler with two possible Rx ports (R1,
achieved by the symmetric design of the antenna geometry and R2), and RHCP wave is received by port R1 and LHCP wave by
proper arrangement of four feed points on the patches, which are fed port R2.
by branch-line hybrid couplers. The experimental results show the Figure 2 shows the equivalent circuit of the proposed antenna.
transmit/receive isolation of more than 36 dB in the 860 –960 MHz
Two equivalent four-port networks of the branch-line coupler and
RFID frequency band. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave
one equivalent 4-port network representing the mutual coupling
Opt Technol Lett 48: 2478 –2481, 2006; Published online in Wiley
InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.22017 between four feed points (a, b, c, d) are cascaded. The scattering
matrix 关SC] for the ideal 3 dB branch-line coupler is as follows
Key words: RFID reader antenna; high isolation; circular polarization when all ports are matched:

冤 冥 冤 冥
1. INTRODUCTION S11 S12 S13 S14 0 j 1 0
S21 S22 S23 S24 1 j 0 0 1
Radio frequency identification (RFID) has recently attracted 关S 兴 ⫽ S
C
S32 S33 S34 ⫽ ⫺ 冑2 1 0 0 j . (1)
31
much interest in supply chain management by retailers and
S41 S42 S43 S44 0 1 j 0
manufacturers. In a passive UHF RFID system, tags are pow-
ered up by a continuous-wave (CW) RF signal transmitted by a
reader, and backscatter transmission from the reader to send
back their data [1]. In a backscatter reader, the transmitted CW The scattering matrix 关SM] for the equivalent four-port network,
signal may be directly coupled to the receiving part of the representing the mutual coupling between four feed points (a, b, c,
reader to drastically degrade the receiving sensitivity. The d), is expressed as follows when all ports are matched:
directly-coupled CW signal is much larger than the backscat-
tered signal from tags, and the receiving part of the reader

冤 冥
should detect the weak signal close to such a strong in-band 0 S ab S ac S ad
interferer. Therefore, it is very critical to achieve high isolation S ba 0 S bc S bd
关S 兴 ⫽ S
M
S cb 0 S cd . (2)
between the transmitting and receiving parts for a good perfor- ca

mance reader. S da S db S dc 0
Toward this end, the reader antenna can be configured with two
separated radiating elements for transmit (Tx) and receive (Rx),
and their separation distance is set to be large enough to give the From Eqs. (1) and (2), the transmission coefficients of SR 1T 1 and
required Tx/Rx isolation [2]. In this type of reader antenna, the SR 2T 1 are given as follows:

2478 MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 48, No. 12, December 2006 DOI 10.1002/mop