A 50 MHz–6 GHz, 2 × 2 MIMO, reconfigurable architecture, software-defined radio in 130nm CMOS

A monolithic 50 MHz-6 GHz software-defined radio transceiver with two transmit (TX) and two receive (RX) channels to support 2 × 2 MIMO is implemented in 130nm CMOS. The transmitter´s and receiver´s frequency translation modes are reconfigurable to direct conversion or dual up-down conversion, featuring an on chip Q-enhanced 3 GHz 6-pole Chebyshev IF BPF in the dual conversion mode. The chip also includes two independent integrated wide-band frequency synthesizers for TX and RX paths to support Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) radios. Each frequency synthesizer has an integrated 50 MHz Direct Digital Synthesis (DDS) based reference into an integer-N PLL with integrated 3-tank VCOs, integrated loop-filter, and a zero-spur phase-frequency detector, to achieve low-spur and high resolution, simultaneously. The radio has >0 dBm TXP_-1dB and >70 dB RX blocker tolerance (in-band and out of band) with <; 900 mW worst case total power consumption per transceiver channel.