A Low-Power Wideband Receiver Front-End for NB-IoT Applications

Abbasi, Arash; Shams, Nakisa; Kakhki, Amin Pourvali; Nabki, Frédéric

doi:10.1109/newcas49341.2020.9159785

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Moreover, the 1/ f noise from the LNTA is directly coupled to the output via the cascode transistor, despite the conventional receiver architecture that uses an AC-coupling capacitor before the mixer to remove low frequency components. To overcome the issues mentioned above, our earlier works [14,16,17] proposed the AI and 1/ f NC circuits.…”

Section: Active-inductor and 1/ F Noise-cancellation Techniquementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Another approach is to employ a method of simultaneous input matching and a 1/ f NC technique that results in a very low NF of 1.94 dB [13] at the cost of very limited RF bandwidth. Both current-reuse receiver (CRR) circuits proposed in [13,14] share the output node with the down-conversion mixer input, which causes loading and a loss of the RF signal. In our earlier works [15][16][17][18], the concept of an active-inductor (AI) and a 1/ f NC technique was introduced to overcome the problems mentioned above.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Comparison of Off-Chip Differential and LC Input Matching Baluns in a Wideband and Low-Power RF-to-BB Current-Reuse Receiver Front-End

Abbasi

Nabki

2022

Electronics

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A wideband and low-power RF-to-baseband (BB) current-reuse receiver (CRR) front-end is proposed, and its performance is verified using two matching networks, one with an LC balun and on-chip biasing inductor, CRR1, and another with a differential balun and without on-chip biasing inductor, CRR2, requiring less area. The transimpedance amplifier (TIA) and low-noise transconductance amplifier (LNTA) share the bias current from a single supply to reduce power consumption. It employs both an active-inductor (AI) and a 1/f noise-cancellation technique to improve the NF and RF bandwidth performance. A passive mixer is utilized for RF to BB conversion, which does not require any DC power and voltage headroom. Both CRR1 and CRR2 are fabricated in TSMC 130nm CMOS technology on a single die and packaged using a QFN48. CRR1 occupies an active area of 0.54 mm2. From 1 to 1.7GHz, it achieves a conversion gain of 41.5dB, a double-sideband (DSB) NF of 6.5dB, S11<−10dB, and an IIP3 of −28.2dBm, while the local-oscillator (LO) frequency is at 1.3GHz. CRR2 occupies an active area of 0.025 mm2. From 0.2 to 1GHz, it achieves an average conversion gain of 37dB, an average DSB NF of 8dB, and an IIP3 of −21.5dBm while the LO frequency is at 0.7GHz. Both CRR1 and CRR2 consume 1.66m from a 1.2V supply voltage.

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Section: Active-inductor and 1/ F Noise-cancellation Techniquementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Comparison of Off-Chip Differential and LC Input Matching Baluns in a Wideband and Low-Power RF-to-BB Current-Reuse Receiver Front-End

Abbasi

Nabki

2022

Electronics

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“…Another alternative in [8] utilizes both input matching and a 1/ f NC technique and reports a low NF of 1.94 dB at the cost of very narrow bandwidth. The same current-reuse receiver architecture is employed in [9] but utilizes a cross-coupled common-gate (CCCG) LNTA topology to enhance the operating bandwidth. However, both [8,9] suffer from the loading effect on the RF signal due to the sharing of the passive mixer input and receiver output nodes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The same current-reuse receiver architecture is employed in [9] but utilizes a cross-coupled common-gate (CCCG) LNTA topology to enhance the operating bandwidth. However, both [8,9] suffer from the loading effect on the RF signal due to the sharing of the passive mixer input and receiver output nodes. A quadrature RF-to-BB current-reuse receiver is proposed in [10], which comprises the architecture from [8].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Design Methodology for Wideband Current-Reuse Receiver Front-Ends Aimed at Low-Power Applications

Abbasi

Nabki

2022

Electronics

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This work gives a design perspective on low-power and wideband RF-to-Baseband current-reuse receivers (CRR). The proposed CRR architecture design shares a single supply and biasing current among both LNTA and baseband circuits to reduce power consumption. The work discusses topology selection and a suitable design procedure of the low noise transconductance amplifier (LNTA), down-conversion passive-mixer, active-inductor (AI) and TIA circuits. Layout considerations are also discussed. The receiver was simulated in 130 nm CMOS technology and occupies an active area of 0.025 mm2. It achieves a wideband input matching of less than −10 dB from 0.8 GHz to 3.4 GHz. A conversion-gain of 39.5 dB, IIP3 of −28 dBm and a double-sideband (DSB) NF of 5.6 dB is simulated at a local-oscillator (LO) frequency of 2.4 GHz and an intermediate frequency (IF) of 10 MHz, while consuming 1.92 mA from a 1.2 V supply.

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“…A current-reuse receiver (CRR) proposed in [19] employed input matching and a 1/f noise reduction technique that results in a low NF of 1.94 dB at the cost of limited RF bandwidth. Moreover, both [19] and [20] suffer from losses of the RF signal due to the sharing of the BB output and passive mixer input. To overcome this issue, our earlier work in [21], applied the concept of an active inductor (AI) from [22], [23] to isolate the mixer input from the BB output, thus reducing the losses of the RF signal before the down conversion.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

A Wideband Low-Power RF-to-BB Current-Reuse Receiver Using an Active Inductor and 1 /f Noise-Cancellation for L-Band Applications

2022

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A low-power and wideband RF-to-baseband (BB) current-reuse receiver (CRR) front-end utilizing both a 1/f noise cancellation (NC) technique and an active inductor (AI) is proposed tuned to operate from 1 GHz to 1.7 GHz for L-Band applications, including those that require high modulation bandwidths. The CRR front-end employs a single supply and shares the bias current of the low noise transconductance amplifier (LNTA) with the BB circuits to reduce the power consumption. To minimize the losses of the radio frequency (RF) signal right before down-conversion, a high impedance AI circuit isolates the mixer input from the CRR output node. The 1/f NC circuit suppresses the low frequency noise of the LNTA that leaks to the output. A common-gate LNTA with g m -boosting, along with a single-to-differential LC-balun are used to enhance the input matching, conversion gain and noise figure (NF). The proposed receiver is fabricated in a TSMC 130 nm CMOS process and occupies an active area of 0.54mm 2 . The input matching (S 11 ) is below −10 dB from 1 GHz to 1.7 GHz. At a local-oscilator (LO) frequency of 1.3 GHz, intermediate-frequency (IF) of 10 MHz and default current settings, the CRR achieves a conversion gain of 41.5 dB, a doublesideband (DSB) NF of 6.5 dB, and an IIP3 of −28.2 dBm while consuming 1.66 mA from a 1.2 V supply. 14 15 employed a current-reuse baseband amplifier in a mixer-first 54 receiver architecture. It achieves very good performance con-55 suming a low-power of 0.38 mW. However, the receiver 56 architecture is not suitable for wideband modulations as it 57 reports a very low baseband bandwidth of 2 MHz that is 58 not suitable for wider modulation bandwidth applications. 59 In [11], a quadrature low noise amplifier (LNA) and active-60 type poly-phase filter (PPF) were used to reduce power con-61 sumption. However, the receiver has a narrow RF bandwidth 62 due to the common-source LNA topology, and high NF 63 because of the quadrature technique used in the LNA. In [12], 64 alternatively, an inverter-based LNA with an LC-balun and 65 passive PPF are used to generate the quadrature signal before 66 the down conversion. This reduces the LO dynamic power 67 for Bluetooth low-energy (BLE), but using an LC-balun and 68 passive PPF is not suitable for wideband applications. In addi-69 tion, a phase-locked loop (PLL) free receiver architecture is 70 proposed in [13] at the cost of a high NF. 71 Recently, current sharing of RF and BB blocks using a sin-72 gle supply voltage has been actively studied. Conventionally, 73 receiver front-ends cascade circuits to receive and amplify a 74 weak RF signal with a LNTA, down-convert it to BB through 75 a mixer and finally convert the current signal to a voltage 76 signal using a transimpedance amplifier (TIA), as shown 77 in Fig. 1. On the other hand, by scaling down the CMOS 78 technology node where the voltage threshold is reduced and 79 transition frequency (f T ) is increased, stacked architectures 80 that reduce power consumption by sharing the current of the 81 RF ci...

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A Low-Power Wideband Receiver Front-End for NB-IoT Applications

Cited by 6 publications

References 14 publications

A Comparison of Off-Chip Differential and LC Input Matching Baluns in a Wideband and Low-Power RF-to-BB Current-Reuse Receiver Front-End

A Comparison of Off-Chip Differential and LC Input Matching Baluns in a Wideband and Low-Power RF-to-BB Current-Reuse Receiver Front-End

A Design Methodology for Wideband Current-Reuse Receiver Front-Ends Aimed at Low-Power Applications

A Wideband Low-Power RF-to-BB Current-Reuse Receiver Using an Active Inductor and 1 /f Noise-Cancellation for L-Band Applications

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