Patent ID: 8811915

Claim:
A network communication card for facilitating ultra high frequency (UHF) radio communication between a terminal and a base station, comprising: a double-sided printed circuit board (PCB); a digital interface for communicating between the network communication card and the terminal; a receiver for receiving incoming radio signals from the base station and processing the received signals for communication to the terminal via the digital interface; a transmitter for transmitting outgoing radio signals from the terminal via the digital interface to the base station, including: a digital synthesizer operating on a digital signal to be transmitted, the digital synthesizer being clocked by a first clock signal at a first rate and responsive to the digital signal to be transmitted to produce a modulated carrier signal; an upconversion circuit operating on the first clock signal to create a second clock signal having a second clock rate greater than the first rate; a transmit mixer to mix the output of the modulated carrier signal from the digital synthesizer with the second clock signal to produce an upconverted signal; a filter for filtering spurious content from the upconverted signal to produce a filtered upconverted signal; a transmit oscillator comprising: a phase locked loop (PLL) receiving the filtered upconverted signal as an input to generate a transmission signal and to transmit the transmission signal via an antenna; wherein at least a portion of each of the transmitter and the receiver are laid out on a first side of the PCB, wherein at least a portion of the digital interface is laid out on a second side of the PCB, opposite to the first side of the PCB.