System demands in personal radio services

The increasing use of Personal Radio Services such as cordless and cellular telephones, pagers, Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs), security systems, etc., means that small, portable receivers are having to work in an increasingly hostile RF environment. The additional requirements of the European EMC Directive mean that front end selectivity requirements have tightened, while the move to lower power consumption requirements have exacerbated the design problem. In this paper, we look at some of these constraints from the fundamental system engineering viewpoint, examining the effects on equipment design, with the inherent compromises in power consumption, signal handling and gain distribution