Design of a 2.4 GHz High-Performance Up-Conversion Mixer with Current Mirror Topology

In this paper, a low voltage low power up-conversion mixer, designed in a Chartered 0.18 μm RFCMOS technology, is proposed to realize the transmitter front-end in the frequency band of 2.4 GHz. The up-conversion mixer uses the current mirror topology and current-bleeding technique in both the driver and switching stages with a simple degeneration resistor. The proposed mixer converts an input of 100 MHz intermediate frequency (IF) signal to an output of 2.4 GHz radio frequency (RF) signal, with a local oscillator (LO) power of 2 dBm at 2.3 GHz. A comparison with conventional CMOS up-conversion mixer shows that this mixer has advantages of low voltage, low power consumption and high-performance. The post-layout simulation results demonstrate that at 2.4 GHz, the circuit has a conversion gain of 7.1 dB, an input-referred third-order intercept point (IIP3) of 7.3 dBm and a noise figure of 11.9 dB, while drawing only 3.8 mA for the mixer core under a supply voltage of 1.2 V. The chip area including testing pads is only 0.62×0.65 mm2

The BLIXER, a Wideband Balun-LNA-I/Q-Mixer Topology

This paper proposes to merge an I/Q current-commutating mixer with a noise-canceling balun-LNA. To realize a high bandwidth, the real part of the impedance of all RF nodes is kept low, and the voltage gain is not created at RF but in baseband where capacitive loading is no problem. Thus a high RF bandwidth is achieved without using inductors for bandwidth extension. By using an I/Q mixer with 25% duty-cycle LO waveform the output IF currents have also 25% duty-cycle, causing 2 times smaller DC-voltage drop after IF filtering. This allows for a 2 times increase in the impedance level of the IF filter, rendering more voltage gain for the same supply headroom. The implemented balun-LNA-I/Q-mixer topology achieves > 18 dB conversion gain, a flat noise figure < 5.5 dB from 500 MHz to 7 GHz, IIP2 = +20 dBm and IIP3 = -3 dBm. The core circuit consumes only 16 mW from a 1.2 V supply voltage and occupies less than 0.01 mm2 in 65 nm CMOS

A low power low voltage mixer for 2.4GHz applications in CMOS-90nm technology

Trabajo presentado al 13th DDECS celebrado en Viena del 14 al 16 de abril de 2010.This paper presents the design of a fully differential double balanced switched transconductor mixer for ZigBee applications in the 2.4GHz band. It provides programmable conversion gain by using an active load stage. The design includes RF and LO input matching networks. It has been implemented in a 90nm 1P9M CMOS process. Post-layout simulations show conversion gains of 12dB/20dB, NF of 18.9dB/18.1dB and power consumption of 4.1mW/4.4mW at high and low gain mode respectively from a 1.2V power supply. It also offers very good linearity performance.This work has been founded in part by the EC through the project SR2 - Short Range Radio (Catrene European project 2A105SR2 and Avanza I+D Spanish project TSI-020400-2008-71), the Spanish Government under project TEC2007-68072/MIC and the Spanish Regional Government of Junta de Andalucía under the project ACATEX (P09-TIC-5386).Peer Reviewe

1.2V, 1.96mW @ 2.4GHz CMOS-90nm switched-transconductor mixer

This paper presents the design of a fully differential double balanced switched transconductor mixer for ZigBee applications in the 2.4GHz band. It provides programmable conversion gain by using an active load stage. The design includes RF and LO input matching networks. It has been implemented in a 90nm 1P9M CMOS process. Post-layout simulations show conversion gains of 12dB/20dB, NF of 18.9dB/18.1dB and power consumption of 4.1mW/4.4mW at high and low gain mode respectively from a 1.2V power supply. It also offers very good linearity performance.España, Gobierno TEC2007- 68072 / MICEspaña, Junta de Andalucía ACATEX (P09-TIC-5386

High LO-RF isolation of zero-IF mixer in 0.18 mu m CMOS technology

In this study, we introduce a zero-IF sub-harmonic mixer with high isolation in the 5 GHz band using 0.18 mu m CMOS technology. Placing an LC-Tank between the class AB stage and the mixer core improves the isolation between the LO to RF at low supply voltage. The measured isolation is 48 dB between the LO and RF ports, and the 9.5 dB conversion gain is achieved with a supply voltage of 7 mA at 2.5 V. In order to alleviate the degradation of linearity due to the high conversion gain, we adopt the class AB stage as RF input stage. The measured IIP3 is -7.5 dBm

SiGe BiCMOS RF front-ends for adaptive wideband receivers

The pursuit of dense monolithic integration and higher operating speed continues to push the integrated circuit (IC) fabrication technologies to their limits. The increasing process variation, associated with aggressive technology scaling, is having a negative impact on circuit yield in current IC technologies, and the problem is likely to become worse in the future. Circuit solutions that are more tolerant of the process variations are needed to fully utilize the benefits of technology scaling. The primary goal of this research is to develop high-frequency circuits that can deliver consistent performance even under the threat of increasing process variation. These circuits can be used to build ``self-healing" systems, which can detect process imperfections and compensate accordingly to optimize performance. In addition to improving yield, such adaptive circuits and systems can provide more robust and efficient solutions for a wide range of applications under varying operational and environmental conditions.Silicon-germanium (SiGe) BiCMOS technology is an ideal platform for highly integrated systems requiring both high-performance analog and radio-frequency (RF) circuits as well as large-scale digital functionality. This research is focused on designing circuit components for a high-frequency wideband self-healing receiver in SiGe BiCMOS technology. An adaptive image-reject mixer, low insertion-loss switches, a wideband low-noise amplifier (LNA), and a SiGe complementary LC oscillator were designed. Healing algorithms were developed, and automated self-healing of multiple parameters of the mixer was demonstrated in measurement. A monte-carlo simulation based methodology was developed to verify the effectiveness of the healing procedure. In summary, this research developed circuits, algorithms, simulation tools, and methods that are useful for building "self-healing" systems.Ph.D