An image-reject down-converter for 802.11a and HIPERLAN2 wireless LANs

An image-reject down-converter for IEEE 802.11a and ETSI HIPERLAN2 wireless local area networks was implemented in a low-cost 46-GHz-f _T silicon bipolar process. The circuit integrates a variable-gain low noise amplifier and a double-balanced mixer along with passive image rejection filters. It exhibits a 4-dB noise figure and a power gain of 23 dB. By reducing the low noise amplifier gain by 9 dB (thanks to a 1-bit gain control), the down-converter achieves an input 1-dB compression point of –14 dBm, while drawing only 23 mA from a 3-V supply voltage. The adopted filtering approach provides an image rejection ratio higher than 60 dB.     

Current-mode design techniques in low-voltage 24-GHz RF CMOS receiver front-end

A new high frequency CMOS current-mode receiver front-end composed of a current-mode low noise amplifier (LNA) and a current-mode down-conversion mixer has been proposed in the frequency band of 24 GHz and fabricated in 0.13-μm 1P8M CMOS technology. The measurement of the current-mode receiver front-end exhibits a conversion gain of 11.3 dB, a noise figure (NF) of 14.2 dB, the input-referred 1-dB compression point (P_-1 dB)(P_{{-1}\,{\rm dB}}) of −13.5 dBm and the input-referred third-order intercept point (P _IIP3) of −1 dBm. The receiver dissipates 27.8 mW where the supply of LNA is 0.8 V and the supply of mixer is 1.2 V. The power consumption of output buffer is not included. The receiver front-end occupies the active area of 1.45 ×0.721.45 \times 0.72 mm² including testing pads. The measured results show that the proposed current-mode approach can be applied to a high-frequency receiver front-end and is capable of low-voltage applications in the advanced CMOS technologies.     

A 1.9-GHz silicon receiver with monolithic image filtering

A 1.9-GHz fully monolithic silicon superheterodyne receiver front-end is presented; it consists of a low noise amplifier (LNA), a tunable image reject filter, and a Gilbert cell mixer integrated in one die. The receiver was designed to operate with a 1.9-GHz RF and a 2.2-GHz local oscillator (LO) for a 300-MHz IF. Two chip versions were fabricated on two different fabrication runs using a 0.5-μm bipolar technology with 25 GHz transit frequency (f_T). Measured performance for the receiver front-end version 1, packaged and without input matching, was: conversion gain 33.5 dB, noise figure 4.9 dB, input IP3 -28 dBm, image rejection 53 dB (tuned to reject a 2.5-GHz image frequency), and 15.9 mA current consumption at +3 V. The image rejection was tunable from 2.4-2.63 GHz by means of an on-chip varactor. Version 2 had increased mixer degeneration for improved linearity. Its measured performance for the packaged receiver with its input matched to 50 Ω was: conversion gain 24 dB, noise figure 4.8 dB, input IP3 -19 dBm, and 65 dB image rejection for a 2.5-GHz image with an image tuning range from 2.34-2.55 GHz     

A low voltage current mode CMOS integrated receiver front-end for GPS system

This paper presents a low voltage, 1.6 GHz integrated receiver front-end which is implemented by the standard 0.35 μm, 3M2P CMOS technology. The receiver consists of a transconductance low noise amplifier (G_m-LNA), a down conversion current mode mixer and a voltage-controlled oscillator using accumulation-mode MOS varactor (A-MOS VCO). A current mode mixer is used to reduce the supply voltage to 1 V. A specially designed G_m-LNA converts RF input voltage to RF input current for the current mode mixer. This could eliminate an unnecessary I–V, V–I conversion and reduce the non-linearity contribution. Moreover, a low voltage A-MOS VCO, with a good phase noise and wide tuning frequency range, is used to generate a required oscillating frequency for the receiver. The integrated receiver front-end has a measured power conversion gain of 11.4 dB, an input referred third-order intercept point (IIP₃) of 6.1 dBm, and a noise figure of 5.87 dB. The measured total power consumption is 40.9 mW with 1 V supply.     

A 35-mW 3.6-mm/sup 2/ fully integrated 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS GPS radio

A single-chip CMOS Global Positioning System (GPS) radio has been integrated using only a couple of external passive components for the input matching network and one external reference for the synthesizer. The receiver downconverts the GPS L1 signal at 1575.42 MHz to an IF of 9.45 MHz. The complete front-end and frequency synthesizer section have been integrated: low noise amplifier, image rejection mixer, IF active filter, and the full phase-locked loop synthesizer, including voltage-controlled oscillator and loop filter. The front-end measured performances are 81-dB maximum gain, 5.3-dB noise figure, and >30-dB image rejection. The synthesizer features a phase noise of -95 dBc/Hz at 1-MHz offset and a total integrated phase noise of less than 7/spl deg/ rms in the 500-Hz-1.5-MHz band. The front-end and the synthesizer draw, respectively, 11 and 9 mA from a 1.8-V supply. The architecture of the front-end and synthesizer has been geared to high level of integration and reduction of silicon area at the lowest possible power consumption. Consequently, the one reported here is the smallest and most integrated CMOS GPS receiver reported so far.     

A single-chip GaAs MMIC image-rejection front-end for digitalEuropean cordless telecommunications

An active image-rejection filter is presented in this paper, which applies actively coupled passive resonators. The filter has very low noise and high insertion gain, which may eliminate the use of a low-noise amplifier (LNA) in front-end applications. The GaAs monolithic-microwave integrated-circuit (MMIC) chip area is 3.3 mm² . The filter has 12-dB insertion gain, 45-dB image rejection, 6.2-dB noise figure, and dissipates 4.3 mA from a 3-V supply. An MMIC mixer is also presented. The mixer applies two single-gate MESFETs on a 2.2-mm² GaAs substrate. The mixer has 2.5-dB conversion gain and better than 8-dB single-sideband (SSB) noise figure with a current dissipation of 3.5 mA applying a single 5-V supply. The mixer exhibits very good local oscillator (LO)/RF and LO/IF isolation of better than 30 and 17 dB, respectively, Finally, the entire front-end, including the LNA, image rejection filter, and mixer functions is realized on a 5.7-mm ² GaAs substrate. The front-end has a conversion gain of 15 dB and an image rejection of more than 53 dB with 0-dBm LO power. The SSB noise figure is better than 6.4 dB, The total power dissipation of the front-end is 33 mW. The MMIC's are applicable as a single-block LNA and image-rejection filter, mixer, and single-block front-end in digital European cordless telecommunications. With minor modifications, the MMIC's can be applied in other wireless communication systems working around 2 GHz, e.g., GSM-1800 and GSM-1900     

A 5-GHz radio front-end with automatically Q-tuned notch filter and VCO

A low-voltage receiver front-end for 5-GHz radio applications is presented. The receiver consists of a low-noise amplifier (LNA) with notch filter, a voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO), and a mixer. The LNA/notch filter has an automatic Q-tuning circuit integrated with it to provide good image rejection. On-chip transformers are used extensively in the receiver to improve performance and facilitate low-voltage operation. The receiver has a gain of 19.8 dB, noise figure of 4.5 dB, a third-order input intercept point (IIP3) of -11.5 dBm, and an image rejection of 59 dB, and the VCO had a phase noise of -116 dBc/Hz at 1-MHz offset.     

A SiGe BiCMOS 24-GHz receiver front-end for automotive short-range radar

This paper presents a fully integrated SiGe BiCMOS 24-GHz receiver front-end implemented for a ultra-wideband automotive short-range radar sensor. The circuit consists of a homodyne I/Q down-converter and a 24-GHz synthesizer. The receiver front-end is able to achieve a power conversion gain as high as 30 dB and a 6-dB noise figure, while preserving high linearity performance thanks to a 1-bit gain control. The frequency synthesizer, which also includes an on-chip loop filter, guarantees a phase noise of −104 dBc/Hz at 1-MHz offset from the 24.125-GHz carrier and a 4.7-GHz tuning range from 20.4 to 25.1 GHz.     

Design of a Noise-Canceling CMOS Wideband Receiver Front-End with Inherent Active Balun

This paper presents the design of an ESD-protected noise-canceling CMOS wideband receiver front-end for cognitive and ultra-wideband (UWB) radio-based wireless communications. Designed in a 0.13-μm CMOS technology, the RF front-end integrates a broadband low-noise amplifier (LNA) and a quadrature down-conversion mixer. While having ESD and package parasitics absorbed into a wideband input matching network, the LNA exploits a combination of a common-gate (CG) stage and a common-source (CS) stage to cancel the noise of the CG-stage and to provide a well balanced differential output for driving the double-balance mixer, which has a merged quadrature topology. A variable-gain method is developed for the LNA to achieve a large factor of gain switch without degrading the input impedance match and the balun function. Drawing 24 mA from 1.5 V, simulations show that the proposed front-end has a 3-dB bandwidth of around 10 GHz spanning from 1.8 GHz up to 11.8 GHz with a maximum voltage conversion gain of 30 dB and a noise figure of 4.3–6.7 dB over the entire band.     

5-GHz CMOS radio transceiver front-end chipset

Incorporating the direct-conversion architecture, a 5-GHz band radio transceiver front end chipset for wireless LAN applications is implemented in a 0.25-μm CMOS technology. The 4-mm² 5.25-GHz receiver IC contains a low noise amplifier with 2.5-dB noise figure (NF) and 16-dB power gain, a receive mixer with 12.0 dB single sideband NF, 13.7-dB voltage gain, and -5 dBm input 1-dB compression point. The 2.7-mm² transmitter IC achieves an output 1-dB compression of -2.5 dBm at 5.7 GHz with 33.4-dB (image) sideband rejection by using an integrated quadrature voltage-controlled oscillator. Operating from a 3-V supply, the power consumptions for the receiver and transmitter are 114 and 120 mW, respectively     

A low power direct conversion receiver RF front-end with high in-band IIP2/IIP3 and low 1/f noise

A low power direct-conversion receiver RF front-end with high in-band IIP2/IIP3 and low 1/f noise is presented. The front-end includes the differential low noise amplifier, the down-conversion mixer, the LO buffer, the IF buffer and the bandgap reference. A modified common source topology is used as the input stages of the down-conversion mixer (and the LNA) to improve IIP2 of the receiver RF front-end while maintaining high IIP3. A shunt LC network is inserted into the common-source node of the switching pairs in the down-conversion mixer to absorb the parasitic capacitance and thus improve IIP2 and lower down the 1/f noise of the down-conversion mixer. The direct-conversion receiver RF front-end has been implemented in 0.18 μm CMOS process. The measured results show that the 2 GHz receiver RF front-end achieves +33 dBm in-band IIP2, 21 dB power gain, 6.2 dB NF and −2.3 dBm in-band IIP3 while only drawing 6.7 mA current from a 1.8 V power supply.     

Tunable wideband SAW-less receiver front-end in 65 nm CMOS

A surface acoustic wave-less receiver front-end for GSM, TD-LTE and TD-SCDMA standards featuring a novel low noise amplifier (LNA) architecture and harmonic rejection technique is presented. The two-stage LNA uses capacitive feedback in the first stage for wideband input matching. It can operate from 500 MHz up to 2.5 GHz with an S₁₁ below ?15 dB. The harmonic rejection mixer structure operates using two- and four-phase local oscillator signals and is capable of achieving a high harmonic rejection over a wide channel bandwidth. The average harmonic rejection is above 60 dB measured over a 20 MHz LTE channel and above 70 dB over a GSM channel. The mixer structure contains digitally tunable resistor and capacitor banks for precise tuning, causing the peak harmonic rejection in the channel to exceed 80 dB. The precise tuning capability ensures good harmonic rejection in the presence of process mismatch and duty cycle mismatch. The 1-dB received signal compression point with a blocker present at 20/80 MHz offset for low-/high-band is 0 and +2 dBm, respectively. In-band IIP3, and IIP2 are ?14.8 and >49 dBm, respectively, for low-band. For high-band they are ?18.2 and >44 dBm. Implemented in 65 nm CMOS, the complete front-end consumes 80 mW of power.     

Low-voltage 1.9-GHz front-end receiver in 0.5-μm CMOS technology

This paper describes the design of a 1.9-GHz front-end receiver. The target application of the receiver is the personal communications standard PCS1900. Powered by a 1-V supply, the receiver consists of a low noise amplifier (LNA) and a downconversion mixer. The receiver was fabricated within a 0.5-μm CMOS technology. The LNA features 15 dB of gain and a 1.8-dB noise figure. The mixer exhibits 1.5-dB conversion loss, 12-dB noise figure, and 0 dBm 1 dB-compression point     

A crystal-tolerant fully integrated CMOS low-IF dual-band GPS receiver

This paper presents the design of a dual-band L1/L2 GPS receiver, that can be easily integrated in portable devices (mainly GSM mobile phones). For the ease of integration with GSM wireless systems the receiver can tolerate most of the common GSM crystals, besides the GPS crystals, this will eliminate the need to use another crystal on board. A new frequency plan is presented to satisfy this requirement. A low-IF receiver architecture is used for dual-band operation with analog on-chip image rejection. The receiver is composed of a narrow-band LNA for each band, dual down-conversion mixers, a variable-gain channel filter, a 2-bit analog-to-digital converter, and a fully integrated frequency synthesizer including an on-chip VCO and loop filter. The complex filter can accept IF frequency variation of 10% around 4.092 MHz which allows the use of the commonly used 10/13/26 MHz GSM crystals and all the GPS crystals. The synthesizer generates the LO signals for both L1/L2 bands with an average phase noise of −95 dBc/Hz. The receiver exhibits maximum gain of 112 and 115 dB, noise figures of 4 and 3.6 dB, and input compression points of −76 and −79 dBm for L1 and L2, respectively. An on-chip variable-gain channel filter provides IF image rejection greater than 25 dB and gain control range over 80 dB. The receiver is designed in 0.13 μm CMOS technology and consumes 18 mW from a 1.2-V supply.     

A 0.1–1 GHz low power RF receiver front-end with noise cancellation technique for WSN applications

A low power 0.1–1 GHz RF receiver front-end composed of noise-cancelling trans-conductor stage and I/Q switch stage was presented in this paper. The RF receiver front-end chip was fabricated in 0.18 µm RF CMOS. Measurement results show the receiver front-end has a conversion gain of 28.1 dB at high gain mode, and the single-sideband (SSB) noise figure is 6.2 dB. In the low gain mode, the conversion gain of the receiver front-end is 15.5 dB and the IP1dB is −12 dBm. In this design, low power consumption and low cost is achieved by current-reuse and inductor-less topology. The receiver front-end consumes only 5.2 mW from a 1.8 V DC supply and the chip size of the core circuit is 0.12 mm².     

A dual-band direct-conversion RF front-end for WiMedia UWB receiver

This paper describes a direct-conversion RF front-end designed for a dual-band WiMedia UWB receiver. The front-end operates in band group BG1 and BG3 frequencies. It includes multi-stage LNAs, down-conversion mixers, a polyphase filter for quadrature local oscillator (LO) signal generation, and LO buffers. The UWB receiver is targeted for a mobile handset, where several other radios can be simultaneously on. Therefore, special attention was paid on minimizing the interference from different wireless systems. The front-end achieves approximately 26-dB gain and 4.9–5.6-dB noise figure (NF) across three sub-bands of BG1. In BG3 mode it obtains 23–26-dB gain and 6.9–7.7-dB NF. The front-end consumes 48.1 and 42.7 mA from a 1.2-V supply voltage in BG1 and BG3 operation modes, respectively. The chip was implemented in a 0.13-μm CMOS.     

A dual-band RF front-end for WCDMA and GSM applications

An RF front-end for dual-band dual-mode operation is presented. The front-end consumes 22.5 mW from a 1.8-V supply and is designed to be used in a direct-conversion WCDMA and GSM receiver. The front-end has been fabricated in a 0.35-μm BiCMOS process and, in both modes, can use the same devices in the signal path except the LNA input transistors. The front-end has a 27-dB gain control range, which is divided between the LNA and quadrature mixers. The measured double-sideband noise figure and voltage gain are 2.3 dB, 39.5 dB, for the GSM and 4.3 dB, 33 dB for the WCDMA, respectively. The linearity parameters IIP3 and IIP2 are -19 dBm, +35 dBm for the GSM and -14.5 dBm and +34 dBm for the WCDMA, respectively     

A 410-mW 1.22-GHz downconverter in a dual-conversion tuner IC for OpenCable applications

A 1.22-GHz downconverter used in a dual-conversion tuner IC for OpenCable applications is presented. The downconverter is configured as an image-reject receiver and utilizes a trifilar transformer in conjunction with capacitively cross-coupled common-gate mixer input stages to achieve a large dynamic range with relatively low power consumption. Fabricated in a five-metal 0.35-/spl mu/m, 27-GHz f/sub T/, silicon-on-insulator BiCMOS technology and consuming 124 mA from a 3.3-V supply, it downconverts the input to an IF of 44 MHz and achieves 26-dB gain, 23-dB gain control range, 5.1-dB noise figure, 33-dBmV P/sub 1dB/, 56-dBmV IIP/sub 3/, -72-dBc composite triple beat (CTB), -60-dBc cross-modulation, and 30-dB image rejection.     

Dual-band RF receiver for GPS-L1 and compass-B1 in a 55-nm CMOS

A fully integrated dual-band RF receiver with a low-IF architecture is designed and implemented for GPS-L 1 and Compass-Bl in a 55-nm CMOS process. The receiver incorporates two independent IF channels with 2 or 4 MHz bandwidth to receive dual-band signals around 1.57 GHz respectively. By implementing a flexible frequency plan, the RF front-end and frequency synthesizer are shared for the dual-band operation to save power consumption and chip area, as well as avoiding LO crosstalk. A digital automatic gain control （AGC） loop is utilized to improve the receiver＇s robustness by optimizing the conversion gain of the analog-to-digital converter （ADC）. While drawing about 20 mA per channel from a 1.2 V supply, this RF receiver achieves a minimum noise figure （NF） of about 1.8 dB, an image rejection （IMR） of more than 35 dB, a maximum voltage gain of about 122 dB, a gain dynamic range of 82 dB, and an maximum input-referred 1 dB compression point of about -36.5 dBm with an active die area of 1.5 × 1.4 mm2 for the whole chip.     

A 1.5-V 2–9.6-GHz Inductorless Low-Noise Amplifier in 0.13-μm CMOS

This paper presents an inductorless low-noise amplifier (LNA) design for an ultra-wideband (UWB) receiver front-end. A current-reuse gain-enhanced noise canceling architecture is proposed, and the properties and limitations of the gain-enhancement stage are discussed. Capacitive peaking is employed to improve the gain flatness and -3-dB bandwidth, at the cost of absolute gain value. The LNA circuit is fabricated in a 0.13-mum triple-well CMOS technology. Measurement result shows that a small-signal gain of 11 dB and a -3-dB bandwidth of 2-9.6 GHz are obtained. Over the -3-dB bandwidth, the input return loss is less than -8.3 dB, and the noise figure is 3.6-4.8 dB. The LNA consumes 19 mW from a low supply voltage of 1.5 V. It is shown that the LNA designed without on-chip inductors achieves comparable performances with inductor-based designs. The silicon area is reduced significantly in the inductorless design, the LNA core occupies only 0.05 mm², which is among the smallest reported designs.