Radio Systems: RF Transceiver Design from Antenna to Bits and Back

Course 241

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Also available as a custom online course.

Nov 03-Nov 07, 2025 - Phoenix, AZ / Waleed Khalil

$2,795

Summary

Over the past two decades, there has been a significant increase in the complexity of RF technology to meet the growing demand for fixed and mobile communication systems. Moving forward, we expect this trend to continue with emerging cellular and wireless standards employing complex modulation schemes and occupying higher bandwidth while emphasizing stringent spectrum efficiency requirements. These advances call for employing sophisticated design principles at both the circuit and system levels and hence the need for a comprehensive understanding of the radio modem.

This course is intended for design, application and test engineers as well as technicians interested in learning about the system aspect of the radio design space covering the entire signal chain from antenna to bits and back. The aim is to apply intuitive system design methods to dissect the radio modem at RF, analog and digital domains with emphasis on: a) physical understanding of the interaction between components and different radio architectures and b) quantitative performance evaluation using simple hand calculations and simulation. Throughout the course, students will be exposed not only to theoretical analysis but also to concrete examples of radio architectures from existing commercial systems (LTE, WCDMA, GSM, WLAN, Bluetooth, etc.). Emerging technologies of interest to the wireless industry such LTE and 5G will also be elucidated in the context of their impact on radio design. The instructor will present various examples using a commercial system design tool to analyze transmitter and receiver end-to-end system metrics such as bit error rate (BER), error vector magnitude (EVM), phase noise, spectrum emission, etc.

Learning objectives

Upon completing the course you will be able to:

Gain in-depth understanding of the different block-level specifications and impairments (e.g. noise, P1dB, IIP3, IIP2, gain, bandwidth, phase noise and spurs) and how to relate them to system level performance metrics (e.g. BER, EVM, modulation type, blocker performance, sensitivity and selectivity)
Traverse between block level specifications and overall system performance and backwards
Analyze and abstract (at block level) the most critical blocks in today’s RF modem (e.g. low noise amplifier, mixer, voltage-controlled oscillator, power amplifier and analog and digital baseband circuits such A/Ds, D/As and filters).
Evaluate the impact of different impairments in radio front-ends on performance, including interference, different noise sources, circuit nonlinearity and phase noise.
Understand the trade-offs between block-level performance, choice of radio architecture and overall system performance (e.g. power, area and cost) in relation to a given communication standard
Learn the major aspects of the digital signal processing chain at both the modulation and demodulation ends
Use simple back-of-the-envelope calculations and understanding of path loss and fading to predict RF system’s performance in terms of link budget and link margin.
Evaluate thru simulation (at block level) various modem design aspects involving RF, analog and digital impairments.
Traverse across legacy wireless standards (e.g. BT, WiFi, GSM,..) and emerging LTE, 5G, MIMO standards and tie back to the impact on radio hardware.
Tie between system level performance parameters and test equipment specifications
>More…

Target Audience

RF and baseband IC engineers, system architects, test engineers, product engineers and technicians. Technical managers who would like to get exposure to RF system technology

Outline

Day One

RF Basics

• dB units (dB, dBm, dBW, dBV, dBHz, dBK and dBc) • voltage and power gain • transmission line properties (RL and VSWR) • S-parameters • Matching and power transfer • amplifiers and attenuators • cascaded gain

Radio Propagation

• free space line of sight (LOS) propagation • atmospheric losses • NLOS propagation • multipath and fading • delay spread vs. Doppler spread • path loss calculation

Antennas

• antenna types • circuit model • antenna parameters - impedance, efficiency, bandwidth, pattern, beam-width, directivity and gain

Day Two

Noise

• noise sources • noise in passive networks • noise representation in time and frequency domains • noise figure • cascaded noise figure analysis • sensitivity • link budget • combining noise sources • spectrum analyzer • attenuator NF

Distortion

• harmonic generation vs. intermodulation • 2nd order distortion - single tone and two tone analyses and filtering • 3rd order distortion - single tone and two tone analyses and filtering • gain compression • receiver desensitization and blocking • calculations - P1dB - IM2 - IM3 - IP3 - Cascaded IIP3 - spurious free dynamic range (SFDR)

Day Three

Mixers

• selectivity vs. sensitivity • mixer types • block vs. channelized conversion • the image problem

Modulation

• complex vs. real signals • properties of complex signals • frequency • phase and time representation of complex signals • noise types • frequency and time domain representation of AWGN

Day Four

Modulation

• channel parameters and capacity limits • constellation diagrams • IQ and polar representation • quadrature modulation • analog modulation types - AM, FM and PM • digital modulation schemes - ASK, OOK,BPSK, QPSK, QAM, BFSK • noise performance • spectrum limitation • digital pulse shaping • ISI • spectrum efficiency • raised and root-raised cosine filtering • Gaussian filter • digital modulation - step-by-step - ADC and DAC limitations

Aerial Access

• multiple access vs. duplexing • time and frequency duplexing • multiple access techniques - FDMA, TDMA, CDMA • Multi carrier modulation • OFDM • mulit-carrier • carrier aggregation • MIMO systems types • emerging LTE and 5G standards

Day Five

Phase Noise

• phase noise vs. jitter • phase noise definition • PSD of voltage and phase signals • phase noise measurement techniques • RMS phase error and EVM • Impact of RMS phase error on BER • Impact of far-out phase noise on receivers and transmitters

Transceiver Architectures

• Heterodyne receiver • image reject filter, image reject receiver, image rejection ratio • Homodyne receiver • quadrature mixing and DC offset • transmitter architectures • transmitter performance parameters (spectrum mask, ACI, EVM)

Transceivers Case Studies

• cellular radio evolution and frequency bands • transmit and receive impairment case studies

Subject Areas:

Very useful course. Tons of information. Opens a wide door for further exploration of related subjects. Class content is great in both depth and breadth. Very up to date content taught in class. Y.X.

An excellent course. Waleed is very knowledgeable and has both breadth and depth in a wide range of topics. This allowed hiim to answer many questions for the benefit of the class. R.S

Very patient. Answered all questions. Well paced. Content was excellent. Well designed course and explanation. D.N.

Extremely knowledgeable, dynamic presenter, responsive. S.M.

Very wide-ranging experience resulted in very good insights. Able to bridge gap from RF - analog - DC intuitively. Very clear explanations and examples. Answers questions very well. A lot of relevant topics covered. A.V.

Dr. Khalil is very personable and very technically knowledgeable. It is refreshing to learn from someone with such depth and breadth of understanding. P.R.

Having a background in industry and academia makes Waleed deliver his course in a very practical and interesting way. All the pieces combine very well and makes me follow the theory behind what we see day to day. L.N.

Very broad coverage of topics. Clear and relevant examples throughout the course. Use of system simulator to emphasize theory. A.B.

This course covered _everything_. E.J.

This is probably the best conducted class I've ever attended. Material was delivered clearly in great amount and well understood. O.M.

the course provided an in-depth insight into otherwise abstract matter and concepts. In addition, the pitfalls and practical applications were explained. C.A.

I liked the combination of theory and practical examples using the simulation software. Excellent instructor, good training materials.

It was an excellent course. Money and time are well worth it. H.S.

The instructor was able to use practical examples to make the class useful and interesting. L.V.

Excellent knowledge from A to Z by instructor. Tony Catlender

Truly enjoyed the class. The instructor was actively engaged with the students. He knows the subject extremely well and provided or developed useful real-world examples. A very interesting instructor. Stu Lever

Great instructor. Extremely knowledgeable. Pete Rico

The level of the course was very good for me. I like to see how things are derived but I don't need to do all the math. S.R.

Great instructor, very knowledgeable, knew his stuff and enjoyable - good personality. A.M.

Extremely personable, tons of experience, very helpful and obviously loves to teach. M.S.

The best Besser class I've attended! The material is very extensive and informative. I felt like I've learned a lot. I would highly recommend this class to my colleagues.

I liked the ability to use the software design environment to see the theory learnt throughout the week.

The instructor was very good. He explained things with the right amount of detail and very clearly. M. D.

Very engaging instructor. Explained everything very well and was open to all questions. C. A.

Very lucid concepts and great practical exposure. Great response when handling doubts and questions from students. Very knowledgeable in all aspects of the RF field. T. G.

The instructor has excellent knowledge. Great attitude to teach. Nice. Excellent teacher.

Instructor is great - very knowledgeable! C. S.