Design and Optimization of an MB-OFDM Ultra-Wideband Receiver Front-End

The design of an MB-OFDM ultra-wideband receiver is challenging when we target power consumption minimization while providing enough robustness against the nearby wireless interference. We present an optimized receiver front-end design obtained by a systematic design space exploration technique based on the platform-based design (PBD) methodology. At the system level, we investigate the interference effects and propose an approach to estimate the inter-modulation products introduced by receiver nonlinearities. We show how we map the system-level performance requirements to circuit-level platforms through an optimization process. We obtain a RF front-end consuming 10.8 mW in a 0.13 mum CMOS technology, which achieves a 22.3% savings of power compared to a manually optimized design.