A 1-mW current reuse quadrature RF front-end for GPS L1 band in 0.18µm CMOS

A new low-power current reuse topology is proposed for the GPS receiver´s RF front-end that combines the higher conversion gain and suppressed noise figure characteristics of cascade structures with the low power consumption of stacked architectures. The presented circuit, called 1.5-stage LMV cell, consists of LNA, Mixer and VCO (LMV) in such a formation that boosts LNA gain and suppresses mixer´s noise figure by cascading the two stages while reusing their currents in the two stacked quadrature VCOs and placing the mixer´s upper tree switches at the vicinity of on-off regions. The circuit is designed and its layout is generated in TSMC 0.18μm CMOS technology. Post-layout simulations using Spectre RF exhibit a 49 dB conversion gain, 5 dB noise figure and -108 dBc/Hz open loop phase noise while consuming only 1 mA current from a 1 V supply voltage.