Introduction

The target of most Radio Frequency (RF) systems is to achieve robust communication with maximum distance and lowest possible power consumption. Several important factors make RF-based communication more effective. For a transmitter, the output power is one of the critical parameters and for a receiver system, the sensitivity is crucial. Both parameters, in combination with the loss in the application, mainly define the RF communication system's performance for a certain frequency range. The impedance curve of the analog circuit represents the behavior of the analog circuit performance. The lost energy consumption increases, in the case of any mismatch. The power loss can be minimized to less than 1 dB with suitable impedance matching. An impedance transformation is necessary as various components require different impedances to work with the highest efficiency. It is possible that the receiver input may have a different impedance than the connected antenna. In such a scenario, the mismatch would lead to loss of energy, which means a loss of performance.

This application note provides detailed information on the impedance matching to achieve the best performance. The description and impedance values in the document are given for the highly integrated ATA8510/ATA8515 transceiver, ATA8710 transmitter and ATA8210/ATA8215 receiver families. The method described in this document applies to most of the RF products from Microchip.