A multi-band multi-standard RF front-end IEEE 802.16a for IEEE 802.16a and IEEE 802.11 a/b/g applications

This paper presents a multi-band multi-standard receiver architecture for wireless applications, such as 802.11 a/b/g WLAN, and 802.16a WMAN. The targeted frequency bands include licensed bands - 2.3 GHz, 2.5∼2.7 GHz, and 3.5∼3.7 GHz, and un-licensed bands - ISM 2.4 GHz and U-NII 5 GHz. The main advantages of the proposed receiver are using a single frequency synthesizer to perform the entire frequency transferring, and each frequency band shares the identical LNA and mixer to reduce chip area. The maximum hardware shared LNA and mixer design are also presented. The S₁₁ of the proposed multi-band LNA is below -10 dB from 2 GHz to 6 GHz. The integrated NF of the RF-front-end is 3.18 dB at 2.4 GHz, 3.47 dB at 3.5 GHz, and 5.47 dB at 5.4 GHz. The conversion gain and IIP3 are 35 dB and -16.7 dBm at 2.4 GHz, 34.3 dB and -17.4 dBm at 3.5 GHz, and 30.6 dB and -11.3 dBm at 5 GHz respectively. Using a 0.18 μm CMOS process, the multi-mode RF front-end dissipates 56 mW from a 1.8 V supply voltage.