A 2-V low-power CMOS direct-conversion quadrature modulator with integrated quadrature voltage-controlled oscillator and RF amplifier for GHz RF transmitter applications

A compact low-voltage low-power CMOS direct-conversion quadrature modulator with integrated quadrature voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) and radio frequency (RF) amplifier for wireless transmitter applications is proposed and analyzed. By applying both baseband input signals with quadrature phases and quadrature local oscillator (LO) signals to a set of combiners, the quadrature modulation functions can be implemented. The low-power operation is enabled by the current reuse technique used among quadrature modulator, quadrature VCO, and RF amplifier. Because only two transistors and one resistor are cascoded in the critical path of the proposed quadrature modulator between power supply and ground, the supply voltage can be as low as 1.5 V. The proposed circuit structure is used to design a quadrature modulator chip for 1.9-GHz digital enhanced cordless telecommunications (DECT) transmitter applications. The experimental chip is fabricated by using 0.35-μm n-well double-poly-triple-metal (DPTM) CMOS technology. The power dissipation is only 18 mW under 2-V power supply voltage. The on-chip quadrature VCO can provide highly accurate quadrature signals without any phase tuning or trimming