A 7.2–16 GHz 50%-LO Receiver with Enhanced Linearity and High Dynamic Range in 55-nm CMOS

A broadband high dynamic range software-defined receiver is presented for X and Ku band applications. An adaptive RF front-end achieves precise gain control through a co-designed attenuator-LNA circuit and a noise canceling low-noise transconductance amplifier (LNTA). A 50%-LO-driven passive I/Q mixer combined with cross-coupled capacitive-feedback TIAs are employed to improve out-of-band linearity and blocker tolerance. Moreover, harmonic rejection of the LO is improved by adopting a quadrature generation circuit based on RC-CR network. Fabricated in a 55-nm CMOS process, the proposed receiver exhibits an adjustable gain of 10–57.7 dB, and a NF of 4.6–7.4 dB across 7.2–16 GHz. The design offers programmable channel bandwidth from 100 to 500 MHz, achieving 7.6 dBm in-band IIP3 and 14.4 dBm out-of-band IIP3 at 100 MHz channel bandwidth. Additionally, the I/Q outputs achieve an image rejection ratio exceeding 35 dB.