A low power low flicker noise merged balun LNA and mixer for 5.2GHz wireless LAN receivers

This paper describes the design and implementation of a merged balun LNA and mixer for the wireless LAN receivers. The proposed architecture of LNA combines the functionality of a balun and LNA in one component. Dynamic current injection (DCI) technique has been used in the mixer circuit to decrease the flicker noise (1/f) corner frequency for the intermediate frequency (IF) output. The LNA and mixer chip covers a frequency range from 4.8 to 5.7 GHz RF signal. The proposed design has been fabricated using TSMC 0.18µm CMOS process. The measured conversion gain shows 27 dB and a minimum noise figure of 4.8 dB from 10 to 200 MHz IF output. The measured IIP3 shows a −5 dBm, with 14 mA current drawn from a 1.8 V.