A 5.8–13 GHz SDR RF front-end for wireless sensors network robust to out-of-band interferers in 65nm CMOS

In this paper a highly-linear software defined radio front-end (LNA and Mixer) for wireless sensor networks in the 5.8-to-13 GHz frequency range is presented. It is suitable to IEEE 802.15.4a and IEEE 802.15.4a and upcoming different standards. The RF front-end features a very high robustness to out-of-band interference (OBI) thanks to mixer-based RF blocker filtering. This allows to remove any dedicated filtering at the antenna reducing costs. The low noise amplifier exploits a common-gate (CG) stage in parallel to a common-source (CS) performing the single-ended to differential-ended conversion avoiding off-chip balun stage. The analog front-end provides 21.6-25.6 dB conversion gain, 2.16-4 dB noise figure and 2.6-5.1 dBm in-band IIP3 over 5.8 GHz to 13 GHz. It tolerates -5 dBm blockers at 100 MHz offset for input-referred 1-dB desensitization. This work has been designed in 65nm CMOS technology, 1.2V supply and 9 mA current consumption.