Analysis and Design of a 260-MHz RF Bandwidth +22-dBm OOB-IIP3 Mixer-First Receiver With Third-Order Current-Mode Filtering TIA

Pini, Giacomo; Manstretta, Danilo; Castello, R.

doi:10.1109/jssc.2020.2987715

Cited by 52 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…After the frequency translation of the switched-LC mixer using f LO = 1.9 GHz, the RF is centered at 3.5 GHz with a measured power conversion gain of −5.6 dB. Similar to other works (see [5], [8], [11], [21]), we have de-embedded the loss of input RF balun for Fig. 16.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…Similar to an N-path filter, the Q-factor of the frequency-translated bandpass filter in a mixer-first receiver gets boosted in this frequency translation process; the resultant Q-factor is proportional to the mixer LO frequency. Because of this high-Q at RF, mixer-first receivers are considered a promising solution for tunable RF filtering front-ends [8]- [11], [27].…”

Section: B Mixer-first Direct-conversion Filtering Front-endsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Hence, the beauty of a mixer-first approach, when compared to a front-end using tunable coupled resonators, is that the RF tuning and high-order selectivity are achieved separately where a set of commutated switches performs RF dialing and a bank of high-order baseband filters rejects OOB interference; this breaks the trade-off between RF operation range and filter performance. The challenge associated with enhanced-selectivity mixerfirst receivers is the design of low-pass high-linearity baseband circuits that provide high-selectivity input impedance [8]- [11], [27]. A high-order filter design at zero or low IF with a baseband bandwidth well below 1 GHz necessitates active-RC-based implementations which often result in limited linearity performance.…”

Section: B Mixer-first Direct-conversion Filtering Front-endsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…14). 3 A differential architecture is utilized to reduce LO clock leakage and harmonic responses around clock even harmonics similar to many mixer-first receivers and N-path filters [5], [8], [11], [21]. A wideband 1:1 off-the-shelf transformer is served as a balun at the RF input for single-ended to differential conversion.…”

Section: Circuit Implementationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, Q-enhanced RF filters have large noise and degraded linearity as active components are utilized for achieving high-Q on chip. Widely tunable mixer-first bandpass receivers that operate beyond 3 GHz have been reported (see [8]- [11]) but have limited OOB linearity and suppression at close-in offset frequencies due to the low-order-filtering input impedance of their baseband amplifiers.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Passive-Mixer-First Acoustic-Filtering Superheterodyne RF Front-End

Seo

Zhou

2021

IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits

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This article presents an agile passive-mixer-first superheterodyne RF front-end that utilizes a gigahertz acoustic filter as its intermediate-frequency (IF) load-essentially a mixer-first acoustic-filtering RF front-end. The passive mixer frequency-translates a sharp but fixed-frequency acousticfiltering response to a much higher and mixer-clock-defined tunable frequency while preserves input matching, high linearity, and introduces minimal loss. In contrast to low-or zero-IF passive-mixer-first receivers which often use active filters at baseband, using an acoustic filter as the IF load is fraught with fundamental challenges. We introduce ON-chip LC tanks, as an impedance shaper, to suppress the acoustic filter impedance components at harmonic frequencies and an all-passive recombination network at IF to share one acoustic filter among multiple paths. Also, we extend the existing analysis of mixer-first frontends from assuming a load impedance with a low-pass frequency response to having a generic load impedance. Our analysis unveils impedance aliasing in a generic mixer-first front-end, motivating the need for an ON-chip impedance shaper. A front-end prototype using a 65-nm CMOS switched-LC passive mixer followed by an off-the-shelf 1.6-GHz surface-acoustic-wave (SAW) filter is designed. In measurement, the RF front-end operates across 2.5-to-4.5 GHz achieving 5.5-dB noise figure and +29.4-dBm IIP3 at 1× bandwidth offset.

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