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Comments on Filter RF Harmonics With Additional PI Network

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Filter RF Harmonics With Additional PI Network

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I have a 900MHz radio with a reference design matching network. The radio feeds to a PCB antenna (PCB antenna hasn't been verified with a VNA, and may not be a great match; this is a project to now fix this system).

There are over the limit harmonics from the 6th harmonic (~5,400MHZ) to (~8,100MHz).

The trace width of the antenna feed are (ostensibly) 50 ohms based on the board stackup.

After the reference design matching network, we did put down an empty PI filter so I can add some additional filtering.

Since we are trying to keep the impedance matched to 50 ohms, what is the best strategy to approach this circuit?

Do you start with a low pass filter and then tweak the low pass filter to re-match as best as possible to 50 ohms?

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General comments (7 comments)
General comments
Olin Lathrop‭ wrote over 3 years ago · edited over 3 years ago

Something doesn't make sense. Why do you care about harmonics at the antenna level? Surely your tuner will filter those out anyway. As long as the antenna resonates well and has the right impedance at the desired frequency, why do you care how much it picks up harmonics too? The first tank circuit in the tuner should squash those pretty well.

Lundin‭ wrote over 3 years ago · edited over 3 years ago

I guess question #1 here is: is this a simplex or duplex radio? Any antenna switches etc present?

coquelicot‭ wrote over 3 years ago

For me, a schematic (or even a basic shema) would help.

leroy105‭ wrote over 3 years ago · edited over 3 years ago

We care about the harmonics coming out of the product because they are over the FCC limits! There's no antenna switch, it's a reference design LoRa radio (there's a lump of passive components to tune to 50 ohms out of the chip, and then I've got an empty pi network now to fix these harmonics). I'm just trying to see at a high level how you tackle filtering the harmonics while maintaining the existing matched network. I don't think the solution is super binary.

Olin Lathrop‭ wrote over 3 years ago

You originally said this was a radio. Now you say it's a transmitter. Which is it?

Lundin‭ wrote over 3 years ago · edited over 3 years ago

Your 6th harmonic are over the spurious emission limits on a LoRa? That sounds strange, did you deviate a lot from reference designs? How many dBm are the harmonics at and what's your carrier output power?

Skipping 1 deleted comment.