Apparatus comprising a broadcast receiver circuit and provided with an antenna

• US 9,054,773 B2
• Filed: 03/19/2009
• Issued: 06/09/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 03/21/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: NXP B.V. (NXP Semiconductors NV)
• Original Assignee: NXP B.V. (NXP Semiconductors NV)
• Inventors: Kerselaers, Anthony
• Primary Examiner(s): Chen, Junpeng
• Application Number:
  US12/933,695
• Publication Number:
  US 20110028114A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,273 Days
• Field of Search: 455/296, 455/501, 455/63.1, 455/67.13, 455/570, 455/114.2, 455/135, 455/222, 455/226.3, 455/283, 455/300, 455/569.1, 455/271, 455/82, 330/310, 333/32, 333/133, 333/175
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 1/18 Input circuits, e.g. for coupling to an antenna or a transmission line coupling networks between antennas or lines and receivers independent of the nature of the receiver H03H

Abstract

The invention relates to an apparatus 1 comprising a broadcast receiver circuit, an embedded antenna for receiving broadcast signals and a tuning circuit coupled between the antenna and the receiver circuit, which tuning circuit comprises a filter circuit coupled to ground, wherein the tuning circuit is designed to have a first resonance at a first frequency below a broadcast band of interest, and a second resonance at a second frequency above the broadcast band and wherein the tuning circuit comprises an amplifier with an output to the receiver circuit and with an input to the filter circuit, and wherein the tuning circuit is provided with a carrier to noise ratio (CNR) which is substantially flat across the broadcast band.

Claims

1. An apparatus comprising

a broadcast receiver circuit,

an embedded antenna configured and arranged for receiving broadcast signals in a broadcast band of interest, the embedded antenna being less than one tenth of the wavelength corresponding to a center frequency of the broadcast band of interest and for presenting a primarily reactive impedance, and

a tuning circuit coupled between the antenna and the broadcast receiver circuit, which tuning circuit includes a filter circuit coupled to ground, wherein the filter circuit includes primarily reactive impedance of the embedded antenna and the tuning circuit is configured and arranged to have a first resonance at a first frequency below a lower cutoff frequency for the broadcast band of interest, and a second resonance at a second frequency above an upper cutoff frequency of the broadcast band and wherein the tuning circuit comprises an amplifier with an output to the receiver circuit and with an input to the filter circuit, and wherein the tuning circuit is configured to provide a carrier to noise ratio (CNR) which is substantially flat across the broadcast band.

2. The apparatus as claimed in claim 1, wherein the filter circuit and the amplifier have a comparable noise level.

3. The apparatus as claimed in claim 1, wherein the tuning circuit is configured and arranged to provide a gain with respect to signals passed via the antenna, with the gain having peaks at the respective resonance frequencies above and below the broadcast band of interest, and wherein variations of the CNR across the broadcast band is at most 1.5 dB.

4. The apparatus as claimed in claim 1, wherein the amplifier has an input impedance in the range of 20Ω

to 500Ω

for an inductive antenna, and 300Ω

to 2 kΩ

for a capacitive antenna.

5. The apparatus as claimed in claim 4, wherein the amplifier comprises an internal feedback to the input.

6. The apparatus as claimed in claim 4, wherein the noise level of the amplifier is reduced in that the amplifier has an input electrode with a reduced resistance connection.

7. The apparatus as claimed in claim 6, wherein the input electrode is connected to the base of a bipolar transistor with an increased surface area.

8. The apparatus as claimed in claim 1, wherein the filter circuit comprises inductors, which inductors have quality factors in the range of 30 to 100, and wherein the broadcast band of interest in the range between 76 Mhz to 108 Mhz.

9. The apparatus as claimed in claim 1, further comprising a transmit circuit coupled to the filter circuit for wireless transmission of audio signals through the antenna, wherein the filter circuit is designed to operate as a filter for suppressing of harmonics in a transmitted signal.

10. The apparatus as claimed in claim 1, wherein the antenna is a capacitive antenna.

11. The apparatus as claimed in claim 9, wherein the transmit circuit has an output impedance that is substantially equal to an input impedance of the amplifier.

12. The apparatus as claimed in claim 1, further including an integrated circuit, the integrated circuit including the amplifier and the broadcast receiver circuit.

13. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the filter circuit includes a series circuit that is connected in series between an antenna and an amplifier, and that is inductive for frequencies above a geometric mean of the broadcast band and capacitive for frequencies below the geometric mean of the broadcast band.

14. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the filter circuit includes

a series circuit connected in series between an antenna and an amplifier and having a capacitance and an inductance,

a first circuit in parallel with the series circuit and having a capacitance value that corresponds to the capacitance of the series circuit, and

a second circuit in parallel with the series circuit and having an inductance value that corresponds to the inductance of the series circuit.

15. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the CNR is a ratio of a level of a signal in the broadcast band at a certain frequency and the noise at the certain frequency, prior to demodulation, and wherein the tuning circuit is configured and arranged to provide the CNR across the broadcast band via overlap of the first and second resonant frequencies.

16. The apparatus of claim 1, wherein the first resonance and the second resonance are defined by circuitry in the tuning circuit to set the passband according to the desired broadcast band of interest.

17. A method comprising:

switching an apparatus to a receive mode that filters broadcast signals from being received by a transmit circuit of the apparatus;

receiving broadcast signals in a broadcast band of interest at an embedded antenna, the embedded antenna being less than one tenth of the wavelength corresponding to a center frequency of the broadcast band of interest and for presenting a primarily reactive impedance;

filtering, using a filter circuit of a tuning circuit, wherein the filter circuit includes the primarily reactive impedance of the embedded antenna and the filter circuit coupled to ground and to the transmit circuit;

receiving the broadcast signals from the antenna at the tuning circuit that includes an amplifier and having a first resonance at a first frequency below a lower cutoff frequency for a broadcast band of interest, and a second resonance at a second frequency above an upper cutoff frequency of the broadcast band; and

providing, to a receiver circuit and from the tuning circuit, the broadcast signals having a carrier to noise ratio (CNR) which is substantially flat across the broadcast band.

18. The method of claim 17, further including the steps of:

switching the apparatus to a transmit mode such that transmitted signals cannot enter the amplifier and the broadcast receiver circuit; and

transmitting the signals through the tuning circuit and the antenna to generate an effective radiated power of 1 uW or less, and wherein variations of the CNR across the broadcast band is at most 1.5 dB.

19. The method of claim 17, wherein receiving the broadcast signals from the antenna at the tuning circuit includes using the first and second resonances to provide a gain with respect to signals passed via the antenna, with the gain having peaks at the respective resonant frequencies that are above and below the frequencies within the broadcast band of interest.