An 8–18GHz 0.18W wideband recursive receiver MMIC with gain-reuse

This paper presents an 8–18GHz wideband receiver with superheterodyne topology. In order to save power, both RF and IF signals share the tunable transconductance stage. The IF output of the first mixer is fed to its tunable input stage for IF amplification in a recursive manner, which significantly enhances the gain tuning without increasing the power. The wideband receiver MMIC is implemented in a 0.13um SiGe BiCMOS technology and achieves 6.7–7.8dB noise figure (NF). The average voltage gain of the receiver is measured as 53dB maximum with 20dB continual tuning and 36dB discrete tuning. The average output P1dB is measured as −10dBm at maximum gain. The receiver dissipates 180mW with 2.2V power supply. To the authors' best knowledge, this is the first fully integrated single-chip receiver MMIC with the coverage of the entire X-band and Ku-band realized on a commercial SiGe process.