A Proposal of RF Front-End Architecture for 4 Frequency Bands with 2 Reception Paths

We propose a novel RF front-end architecture to receive 4 signals on different frequency bands with 2 reception paths. The architecture translates 4 RF signal frequencies to 2 intermediate frequencies by utilizing the principle of image rejection mixer. Spectrum of 2 received signals are overlapped on the same intermediate frequency. Spectrum of the other 2 received signals are also overlapped on the other intermediate frequency. After the frequency translation, a signal processing demultiplexs their overlapped signals. This architecture can reduce RF components compared with a conventional RF front-end architecture that has each path dedicated to the reception of only one frequency band. Measurement and simulation results are in good agreement. We confirmed the feasibility of the proposed architecture.