A CMOS passive mixer with low flicker noise for low-power direct-conversion receiver

A CMOS passive mixer is designed to mitigate the critical flicker noise problem that is frequently encountered in constituting direct-conversion receivers. With a unique single-balanced passive mixer design, the resulted direct-conversion receiver achieves an ultralow flicker-noise corner of 45 kHz, with 6 dB more gain and much lower power and area consumption than the double-balanced counterpart. CMOS switches with a unique bias-shifting network to track the LO DC offset are devised to reduce the second-order intermodulation. Consequently, the mixer's IIP2 has been greatly enhanced by almost 21 dB from a traditional single-balanced passive mixer. An insertion compensation method is also implemented for effective dc offset cancellation. Fabricated in 0.18 /spl mu/m CMOS and measured at 5 GHz, this passive mixer obtains 3 dB conversion gain, 39 dBm IIP2, and 5 dBm IIP3 with LO driving at 0 dBm. When the proposed mixer is integrated in a direct-conversion receiver, the receiver achieves 29 dB overall gain and 5.3 dB noise figure.

[1]  B. Razavi,et al.  A 5.2-GHz CMOS receiver with 62-dB image rejection , 2000, 2000 Symposium on VLSI Circuits. Digest of Technical Papers (Cat. No.00CH37103).

[2]  T. Melly,et al.  A 1.3 V low-power 430 MHz front-end using a standard digital CMOS process [ISM wireless link] , 1998, Proceedings of the IEEE 1998 Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (Cat. No.98CH36143).

[3]  T. Lee,et al.  A 1.5 V, 1.5 GHz CMOS low noise amplifier , 1996 .

[4]  I. Kouchev,et al.  A 1.5-V 45-mW direct-conversion WCDMA receiver IC in 0.13-μm CMOS , 2003, IEEE J. Solid State Circuits.

[5]  Michiel Steyaert,et al.  A 1.5 GHz highly linear CMOS downconversion mixer , 1995, IEEE J. Solid State Circuits.

[6]  Rinaldo Castello,et al.  A 15 mW, 70 kHz 1/f corner direct conversion CMOS receiver , 2003, Proceedings of the IEEE 2003 Custom Integrated Circuits Conference, 2003..

[7]  Danilo Manstretta,et al.  Second-order intermodulation mechanisms in CMOS downconverters , 2003, IEEE J. Solid State Circuits.

[8]  T. Melly,et al.  A 1.3V low-power 430 MHz front-end using a standard digital CMOS process , 1998 .

[9]  H.T. Friis,et al.  Noise Figures of Radio Receivers , 1944, Proceedings of the IRE.

[10]  Qiuting Huang,et al.  A 1.5V 45mW direct conversion WCDMA receiver IC in 0.13/spl mu/m CMOS , 2003, 2003 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference, 2003. Digest of Technical Papers. ISSCC..

[11]  Ahmadreza Rofougaran,et al.  A 5-GHz direct-conversion CMOS transceiver utilizing automatic frequency control for the IEEE 802.11a wireless LAN standard , 2003, IEEE J. Solid State Circuits.

[12]  R. Castello,et al.  A 0.18 /spl mu/m CMOS direct-conversion receiver front-end for UMTS , 2002, 2002 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference. Digest of Technical Papers (Cat. No.02CH37315).

[13]  A.A. Abidi,et al.  Noise in RF-CMOS mixers: a simple physical model , 2000, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[14]  M. Zargari,et al.  A 5 GHz CMOS transceiver for IEEE 802.11a wireless LAN , 2002, 2002 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference. Digest of Technical Papers (Cat. No.02CH37315).

[15]  Y. Tsividis.  Operation and modeling of the MOS transistor , 1987 .

[16]  Rinaldo Castello,et al.  Front-End for UMTS , 2002 .

[17]  Thomas H. Lee,et al.  The Design of CMOS Radio-Frequency Integrated Circuits: RF CIRCUITS THROUGH THE AGES , 2003 .

[18]  Pengfei Zhang,et al.  A direct conversion CMOS transceiver for IEEE 802.11a WLANs , 2003, 2003 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference, 2003. Digest of Technical Papers. ISSCC..

[19]  T.H. Lee,et al.  A 12 mW wide dynamic range CMOS front end for a portable GPS receiver , 1997, 1997 IEEE International Solids-State Circuits Conference. Digest of Technical Papers.