Configurable direct-conversion / superheterodyne baseband down-link channel for W-CDMA applications

A configurable W-CDMA baseband down-link (BDL) channel suitable to be used with both direct conversion (DIR) and superheterodyne (SHT) architectures has been integrated in a double-poly 0.6 μm CMOS technology. The BDL is an analog signal processor consisting of calibrated active-RC filters and oversampled 6-bit analog-to-digital pipeline converters, which sufficiently suppresses the adjacent channel and other interferers before digital signal-processing on an external DSP. The designed BDL channel achieves 38.4 dB SNDR, 43 dB SFDR in DIR mode and 38.3 dB SNDR, 42.8 dB SFDR in SHT mode with an overall power consumption of only 49 mW/58 mW (DIR/SHT) from a single 2.8 V power supply. A low power consumption mode allows to further reduce these values down to 41 mW/50 mW (DIR/SHT) without significant detrimental effects to BDL performance.