A low power CMOS RF transmitter front-end for 2.4 GHz ZigBee applications

This paper presents a low-power transmitter front-end for 2.4 GHz ZigBee applications, in a 0.18 /spl mu/m CMOS technology. The upconversion mixer is implemented by using a passive mixer topology which dissipates no DC current and exhibits good linearity. Low-power, high-linearity driver amplifier is designed by adopting a folded cascode topology with an additional gate-source capacitor. The measurements show 12 dB conversion gain, 0 dBm output power, 11 dBm OIP3 and 30 dB LO rejection while dissipating 1.8 mA from 1.8 V supply.