WIRELESS & RF

RF Front End & Transceivers

Q: Do CFR and DPD work with these transceivers?

Yes that is the point of integrating them properly. Crest-factor reduction and digital predistortion in the digital front end work together with the transceiver and power amplifier to hold ACLR and EVM while running the PA efficiently. The DPD observation path uses the transceivers own receive chain, so the front end, the transceiver and the DFE are designed as one loop.

A complete radio is more than its digital front end. It is the RF front end — filtering, low-noise and power amplification, switching and duplexing — and the transceiver that converts between RF and digital. We design the front end, integrate the industry’s leading transceivers, and close the loop with CFR and DPD, so the radio works as one system from antenna to baseband.

RF front endLNA · PATransceiversAnalog DevicesTexas InstrumentsJESD204CFR · DPD

The chain Front end Transceivers Questions

One radio, antenna to baseband — where the RF front end, the transceiver and the digital front end meet

THE RF FRONT END

Between the antenna and the converter.

The front end is where the radio’s real sensitivity and linearity are set — and where a budget, not a part number, decides performance.

Low-noise amplification — the first amplifier sets the noise figure of the whole receiver, so its design and placement in the chain decide how weak a signal the radio can hear.
Power amplification & drivers — the transmit path’s efficiency and linearity, which is exactly what CFR and DPD exist to protect.
Filtering — band and channel filtering to keep out-of-band energy from desensitising the receiver or breaking spectral masks.
Switching & duplexing — T/R switches, duplexers and circulators that let transmit and receive share an antenna without blinding each other.
The budget — gain, noise figure, linearity (IP3), and isolation balanced across the whole chain. This is the engineering; the components implement it.

RF TRANSCEIVERS

We design with the best, and integrate them properly.

Integrated wideband transceivers collapse what used to be a board of mixers, converters and synthesisers into one device. Making one work in a system is its own discipline — and the transceivers we design with most are from two vendors.

Analog Devices — the ADRV9029 and ADRV9002 (RadioVerse) wideband transceivers for cellular and mission-critical radio, and the AD9081 / AD9082 MxFE RF-sampling converters for direct-RF architectures.
Texas Instruments — the AFE79xx / AFE7900 RF-sampling transceivers, integrating wideband ADCs, DACs and on-chip DUC/DDC for multi-band radio.
The integration work — RF matching and board design, the JESD204B/C links and clocking (SYSREF, deterministic latency), calibration, and bring-up. A transceiver is only as good as the system engineered around it.
Licensable IP, integrated — beyond the transceiver, we integrate wireless, DSP and AI IP cores from partners such as CEVA into the baseband and PHY, alongside our own IP, so the digital side of the radio is built from proven blocks.
Vendor-independent by design — we select the device per band, bandwidth, channel count, power and cost. The architecture, the front end and the digital front end are ours; the transceiver is chosen to fit.

WHERE THIS APPLIES

Industries this serves.

Telecommunications Aerospace & Defence Semiconductor Media & Broadcast

COMMON QUESTIONS

What engineers ask about this.

Which RF transceivers do you design with?

We design radios around the leading integrated transceivers rather than tying ourselves to one part. From Analog Devices that means the ADRV9029 and ADRV9002 (RadioVerse) wideband transceivers and the AD9081/AD9082 MxFE RF-sampling converters; from Texas Instruments, the AFE79xx / AFE7900 RF-sampling transceivers. The right device is chosen per band, bandwidth, channel count, power and cost — and the board, clocking and digital front end are designed around that choice.

What does the RF front end include?

Everything between the antenna and the transceiver: band filtering, the low-noise amplifier on receive, the power amplifier and driver on transmit, transmit/receive switches, and duplexers or circulators where the architecture needs them. The work is the budget — gain, noise figure, linearity and isolation balanced across the chain — because that budget, not any single part, decides the radio’s real performance.

How does the transceiver connect to the FPGA or SoC?

Over high-speed JESD204B/C serial links, with the clocking and deterministic sync (SYSREF) that keep converters aligned. On the digital side the samples land in the digital front end — DUC and DDC, CFR and DPD — on an FPGA or SoC. Getting the JESD lane rates, clocking tree and latency right is a large part of making a transceiver actually work in a system.

Do CFR and DPD work with these transceivers?

Yes — that is the point of integrating them properly. Crest-factor reduction and digital predistortion in the digital front end work together with the transceiver and power amplifier to hold ACLR and EVM while running the PA efficiently. The DPD observation path uses the transceiver’s own receive chain, so the front end, the transceiver and the DFE are designed as one loop.

Are you tied to Analog Devices or Texas Instruments?

No. We integrate their transceivers because they are excellent and widely used, and we design with them often — but the architecture, the RF front end and the digital front end are ours, and we select whichever transceiver fits the band and the budget. The capability is the integration and the system, not a single vendor.

KEEP READING

Related work.

PRODUCTS

Bring us the difficult part.

From the antenna to the baseband, a radio is a system. Tell us the band, the bandwidth and the budget, and we will design it.

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RF Front End & Transceivers

Between the antenna and the converter.

We design with the best, and integrate them properly.

Industries this serves.

What engineers ask about this.

Which RF transceivers do you design with?

What does the RF front end include?

How does the transceiver connect to the FPGA or SoC?

Do CFR and DPD work with these transceivers?

Are you tied to Analog Devices or Texas Instruments?

Related work.

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Partners & ecosystem

Bring us the difficult part.