A 17pJ/bit broadband mixed-signal demodulator in 90nm CMOS

This paper presents the first fully integrated mixed-signal demodulator incorporating ultra low-power 3mW 3Gsps 3-bit ADCs and a 2mW high-speed real-time digital signal processing in 90nm CMOS that requires neither external synchronization controls nor processing to demodulate up to 3.5Gbps binary phase-shift keying (BPSK) modulated signal. The demodulator is integrated with IQ mixers, 13GHz QVCO, frequency synthesizers and baseband AGC, for an overall power consumption of 60mW from a 1V supply. The entire demodulator chip occupies 1.275×1.19mm² and enables error free demodulation up to 2.5Gbps and BER of 1E-09 up to 3Gbps. To the best of authors´ knowledge, this demonstrates the maximum throughput at minimum power budget among all types of CMOS multi-gigabit demodulators.