A sub-mW all-passive RF front end with implicit capacitive stacking achieving 13 dB gain, 5 dB NF and +25 dBm OOB-IIP3

Vijaya Kumar Purushothaman, Eric A.M. Klumperink, Berta Trullas Clavere, Bram Nauta

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionAcademicpeer-review

    7 Citations (Scopus)
    317 Downloads (Pure)

    Abstract

    This paper presents a sub-mW mixer-first RF front-end that exploits a novel capacitive stacking technique in an altered bottom-plate N-path filter/mixer to achieve passive voltage gain and high-linearity at low noise figure. Capacitive stacking is realized implicitly by reading out the voltage from the bottom-plate of N-path capacitors instead of their top-plate, which provides a 2x gain at the read-out capacitors. Additional passive voltage gain is achieved using impedance upconversion while improving the out-of-band linearity performance of small switches. With no other active circuitry, only clock generation circuits determine the total power consumption of this RF front-end. A prototype is fabricated in GF22 nm FDSOI technology. Operating at f LO= 1 GHz, the prototype achieves a voltage gain of 13 dB, 5 dB Noise Figure and +25/+66 dBm Out-of-band IIP3/IIP2 at 160 MHz offset while consuming only 600 μW of power from a 0.8 V supply.

    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationIEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium 2019
    Place of PublicationBoston, Massachusetts, US
    PublisherIEEE
    Pages91-94
    Number of pages4
    ISBN (Electronic)978-1-7281-1701-0
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 3 Jun 2019
    EventIEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium 2019 - Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, Boston, United States
    Duration: 2 Jun 20194 Jun 2019

    Conference

    ConferenceIEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium 2019
    Abbreviated titleRFIC 2019
    Country/TerritoryUnited States
    CityBoston
    Period2/06/194/06/19

    Keywords

    • passive mixer
    • N-path filter
    • mixer-first receiver
    • bottom plate mixing
    • capacitive stacking
    • high linearity
    • Low Power
    • RF front-ends

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