February 21, 2023

Imagine sitting in a packed stadium for a pivotal football game — tens of thousands of people are using mobile phones at the same time, perhaps video chatting with friends or posting photos on social media. The radio frequency signals being sent and received by all these devices could cause interference, which slows device performance and drains batteries.

Designing devices that can efficiently block unwanted signals is no easy task, especially as 5G networks become more universal and future generations of wireless communication systems are developed. Conventional techniques utilize many filters to block a range of signals, but filters are bulky, expensive, and drive up production costs.

MIT researchers have developed a circuit architecture that targets and blocks unwanted signals at a receiver’s input without hurting its performance. They borrowed a technique from digital signal processing and used a few tricks that enable it to work effectively in a radio frequency system across a wide frequency range.

Complete article from MIT News.