Low-Cost Direct Conversion RF Front-Ends in Deep Submicron CMOS

This paper reviews architectures and circuit techniques suitable for highly integrated broadband receiver front-ends. Direct conversion simplifies the receiver architecture, resistive feedback LNAs reduce silicon area and current mode passive mixer operation improves the receiver linearity and reduces flicker noise. A 2-5.8 GHz receiver front-end dissipating 85 mW at 5 GHz while occupying 0.2 mm² active area is fabricated as a demonstration of the combination of these concepts. It provides 44 dB of gain, 3.4 dB double side band noise figure, -21 dBm iIP3 and -15 dB of input matching.