A 0.8 -3.4 GHz, Low-Power and Low-noise RF-to-BB-Current-Reuse Receiver Front-End for Wideband Local and Wide-area IoT Applications

A low-noise, low-power and wideband RF-to-baseband (BB)-current-reuse quadrature (I/Q) receiver frontend using an active-inductor (AI) technique is proposed to support several local and wide-area wireless standards from 0.8 GHz to 3.4 GHz. To achieve low-power, a single supply and de bias current are shared between a low-noise transconductance amplifier (LNTA) and a transimpedance amplifier (TIA). A double-balanced current driven passive mixer with a 25% duty-cycle local oscillator (LO) to enhance the overall performance are used. To improve the gain and noise performance of the receiver, a high impedance AI is employed to isolate the RF signal path from the output node and BB signal that allows the receiver to operate at higher frequencies with minimum degradation. A g_m -boosted capacitive cross-coupled common-gate (CCC-CG) LNTA topology is employed to enhance input-matching, gain and NF without consuming extra power. The proposed receiver is implemented in 130-nm TSMC CMOS process and occupies an active area of 0.025 mm². In the default current setting, at an 4 MHz intermediate-frequency (IF) and a 2.4 GHz radiofrequency (RF), it achieves a voltage gain of 39.5 dB, a double-sideband (DSB) noise figure (NF) of 2.6 dB, S₁₁ of less than -15dB and an IIP3 of -28dBm while consuming 1.6mA from 1.2 V supply voltage.