System Analysis of Six-Port-Based RF-Receivers

Six-port-based mobile RF-receivers are a competitive alternative for the reception of today's and future wideband communications signals and software-defined-radio systems. This paper provides a general, systematic, and analytic insight into the signal processing of six-port-based receivers. The influences of the rectified wave within the receivers' signal processing will be identified to have significant impact on the practical application of six-port-based receivers. The presented, first analytically complete system analysis considers any higher-order non-linearity and enables limitation-free design and simulation of such topologies. To overcome the spurious influences of the rectified wave, enhanced receiver architectures are presented which compensate for the rectified wave in analog domain.