A Software-Defined Radio Receiver in 65nm CMOS Robust to Out-of-Band Interference

Two techniques are presented in this paper for a software-defined radio (SDR) receiver robust to out-of-band interference. Voltage gain is realized at IF simultaneously with low-pass filtering to mitigate blockers and out-of-band intermodulation distortion. A 2-stage polyphase harmonic rejection (HR) mixer concept robust to gain error achieves 2nd-6th HR of more than 60dB for 40 samples without trimming or calibration. A prototype 0.4-0.9G zero-IF receiver in 65nm CMOS has 34dB gain, 4dB NF, +3.5dBm IIP3 and +47dBm IIP2 while drawing 50mA from 1.2V

A Software-Defined Radio Receiver Architecture Robust to Out-of-Band Interference

In a software-defined radio (SDR) receiver it is desirable to minimize RF band-filtering for flexibility, size and cost reasons, but this leads to increased out-of-band interference (OBI). Besides harmonic and intermodulation distortion (HD/IMD), OBI can also lead to blocking and harmonic mixing. A wideband LNA [1, 2] amplifies signal and interference with equal gain. Even a low gain of 6dB can clip 0dBm OBI to a 1.2V supply, blocking the receiver. Hard-switching mixers not only translate the wanted signal to baseband but also the interference around LO harmonics. Harmonic rejection (HR) mixers have been used [3, 1, 4], but are sensitive to phase and gain mismatch. Indeed the HR in [4] shows a large spread, whereas other work only shows results from one chip [3, 1]. This paper describes techniques to relax blocking and HD/IMD, and make HR robust to mismatch

A 0.2-to-2.0GHz 65nm CMOS Receiver without LNA achieving >11dBm IIP3 and <6.5 dB NF

Spurious-free dynamic range (SFDR) is a key specification of radio receivers and spectrum analyzers, characterizing the maximum distance between signal and noise+distortion. SFDR is limited by the linearity (intercept point IIP3 mostly, sometimes IIP2) and the noise floor. As receivers already have low noise figure (NF) there is more room for improving the SFDR by increasing the linearity. As there is a strong relation between distortion and voltage swing, it is challenging to maintain or even improve linearity intercept points in future CMOS processes with lower supply voltages. Circuits can be linearized with feedback but loop gain at RF is limited [1]. Moreover, after LNA gain, mixer linearity becomes even tougher. If the amplification is postponed to IF, much more loop gain is available to linearize the amplifier. This paper proposes such an LNA-less mixer-first receiver. By careful analysis and optimization of a passive mixer core [2,3] for low conversion loss and low noise folding it is shown that it is possible to realize IIP3≫11dBm and NF≪6.5dB, i.e. a remarkably high SFDR≫79dB in 1MHz bandwidth over a decade of RF frequencies

A 400-to-900 MHz Receiver with Dual-domain Harmonic Rejection Exploiting Adaptive Interference Cancellation

Wideband direct-conversion harmonic-rejection (HR) receivers for software-defined radio aim to remove or relax the pre-mixer RF filters, which are inflexible, bulky and costly [1,2]. HR schemes derived from [3] are often used, but amplitude and phase mismatches limit HR to between 30 and 40dB [1,2]. A quick calculation shows that much more rejection is wanted: in order to bring harmonic responses down to the noise floor (e.g. −100dBm in 10MHz for 4dB NF), and cope with interferers between −40 and 0dBm, an HR of 60 to 100dB is needed. Also in terrestrial TV receivers and in applications like DVB-H with co-existence requirements with GSM/WLAN transmitters in a small telephone, high HR is needed

A Discrete-Time Mixing Receiver Architecture with Wideband Image and Harmonic Rejection for Software-Defined Radio

A discrete-time mixing architecture for software defined radio receivers is proposed. It exploits 8x RF voltage oversampling followed by charge domain weighting to achieve 40dB 3rd and 5th harmonic rejection without channel bandwidth limitations. Also noise folding is reduced by 3dB. A zero-IF downconverter chip in 65nm CMOS can receive RF signals up to 900MHz, with NFmin=12dB, IIP3=11dBm at <20mW power consumption including multi-phase clock\ud generation

A Discrete-Time Mixing Receiver Architecture with Wideband Harmonic Rejection

A discrete-time mixing architecture for software-defined radio receivers exploits 8 RF voltage oversampling followed by charge-domain weighting to achieve 40dB 3rd and 5th harmonic rejection without channel bandwidth limitations. Noise folding is also reduced by 3dB. A zero-IF downconverter chip in 65nm CMOS can receive RF signals up to 900MHz, with NFmin=12dB, IIP3=11dBm at <20mW power consumption including multi-phase clock generation

Discrete-Time receivers for software-defined radio: challenges and solutions

Abstract—CMOS radio receiver architectures, based on radio frequency (RF) sampling followed by discrete-time (DT) signal processing via switched-capacitor circuits, have recently been proposed for dedicated radio standards. This paper explores the suitability of such DT receivers for highly flexible softwaredefined radio (SDR) receivers. Via symbolic analysis and simulations we analyze the properties of DT receivers, and show that at least three challenges exist to make a DT receiver work for SDR: 1) the sampling clock frequency is related to the radio frequency, complicating baseband filter design; 2) a frequencydependent phase shift is introduced by pseudo-quadrature and pseudo-differential sampling; 3) the conversion gain of a charge sampling front-end is strongly frequency-dependent. Some potential solutions are also suggested for each challenge. Compared to a mixer based radio receiver, extra costs are needed to solve these problems

A 0.5-20GHz quadrature downconverter

A quadrature downconverter with 4GHz IF bandwidth and working over the 0.5–20GHz RF frequency range has been designed, fabricated, and tested. The downconverter uses a frequency doubling and dividing scheme to generate quadrature local oscillator signals from 0.5–17GHz and a pair of Gilbert-cell mixers to perform downconversion. When the IF outputs are combined with a commercial quadrature hybrid, the mixer achieves an image rejection ratio greater than 35dB over the entire band with no on-chip calibration or tuning. The active die area is approximately 0.5 x 1 mm^2

Analysis and Design of Wideband Low Noise Amplifier with Digital Control

The design issues in designing low noise amplifier (LNA) for Software-Defined-Radio (SDR) are reviewed. An inductor-less wideband low noise amplifier aiming at low frequency band (0.2-2GHz) for Software-Defined-Radio is presented. Shunt-shunt LNA with active feedback is used as the first stage which is carefully optimized for low noise and wide band applications. A digitally controlled second stage is employed to provide an additional 12dB gain control. A novel method is proposed to bypass the first stage without degrading input matching. This LNA is fabricated in a standard 0.18 um CMOS technology. The measurement result shows the proposed LNA has a gain range of 6dB-18dB at high gain mode and -12dB-0dB at low gain mode, as well as a –3dB bandwidth of 2GHz. The noise figure (NF) is 3.5-4.5dB in the high gain setting mode. It consumes 20mW from a 1.8V supply

RF Frontend for Spectrum Analysis in Cognitive Radio

Advances in wireless technology have sparked a plethora of mobile communication standards to support a variety of applications. FCC predicts a looming crisis due to the exponentially growing demand for spectrum and it recommends to increase the efficiency of spectrum utilization. Cognitive Radio (CR) is envisioned as a radio technology which detects and exploits empty spectrum to improve the quality of communication. Spectrum analyzer for detecting spectrum holes is a key component required for implementing cognitive radio. Mitola's vision of using an RF Analog-to-Digital (ADC) to digitize the entire spectrum is not yet a reality. The traditional spectrum analysis technique based on a RF Front end using an LO Sweep is too slow, making it unsuitable to track fast hopping signals. In this work, we demonstrate an RF Frontend that can simplify the ADC's requirement by splitting the input spectrum into multiple channels. It avoids the problem of PLL settling by incorporating LO synthesis within the signal path using a concept called Iterative Down Converter. An example 0.75GHz-11.25GHz RF Channelizer is designed in 65nm Standard CMOS Process. The channelizer splits the input spectrum (10.5GHz bandwidth) into seven channels (each of bandwidth 1.5GHz). The channelizer shows the ability to rapidly switch from one channel to another (within a few ns) as well as down-converting multiple channels simultaneously (concurrency). The channelizer achieves a dynamic range of 54dB for a bandwidth of 10.5GHz, while consuming 540mW of power. Harmonic rejection mixer plays a key role in a broadband receiver. A novel order scalable harmonic rejection mixer architecture is described in this research. A proof-of-principle prototype has been designed and fabricated in a 45nm SOI technology. Experimental results demonstrate an operation range of 0.5GHz to 1.5GHz for the LO frequency while offering harmonic rejection better than 55dB for the 3rd harmonic and 58dB for the 5th harmonic across LO frequencies. While cognitive radio solves the spectrum efficiency problem in frequency domain, the electronic beam steering provides a spatial domain solution. Electronic beam forming using phased arrays have been claimed to improve spectrum efficiency by serving more number of users for a given bandwidth. A LO path phase-shifter with frequency-doubling is demonstrated for WiMAX applications