A High IIP2 Direct-Conversion Receiver Using Even-Harmonic Reduction Technique for Cellular CDMA/PCS/GPS Applications

A high IIP2 direct-conversion receiver for cellular CDMA/PCS/GPS has been developed in a 0.35 mum SiGe BiCMOS process. This receiver consists of a RF front-end chip and a base-band chip. The RF front-end chip includes three LNAs, three mixer cores with a common output stage, and LO distribution blocks. The base-band chip includes a channel selection filter, an output buffer, and a DC calibration block. To achieve high IIP2 performance, an even-harmonic reduction technique is proposed based on a simplified analysis of second-order intermodulation. A 40-dB improvement of the IIP2 performance is accomplished by this technique, which reduces sensitivity to operating conditions and to output load mismatches. This receiver also attains high IIP3 and a low-noise figure. Measurement results show 71 dBm IIP2, -1.3 dBm IIP3, and 2.4 dB NF for Cellular CDMA; 68 dBm IIP2, - 3.7 dBm IIP3, and 2.9 dB NF for PCS; and 26 dBm IIP2 -30 dBm IIP3, and 2 dB NF for GPS.