An ultra-low-cost Bluetooth SOC in 0.11-μm CMOS

A highly-integrated, ultra-low-cost Bluetooth SOC implemented in 0.11μm digital CMOS technology is disclosed. To reduce BOM count and cost, an integrated balun is designed for the transceiver front-end. A 4xLO based VCO is implemented to reduce LO pulling, and minimize TX out-of-band spurious in the direct-conversion transmitter. The transmitter provides high output power at +10dBm and +7dBm in BDR and EDR3 modes respectively, with 1.5-kHz frequency stability and <6% RMS DEVM The receiver sensitivity is better than −95.5dBm, −96.5dBm and −89dBm for BDR, EDR2 and EDR3 modes respectively. DC current consumption for continuous TX transmission at +10dBm output power is 48mA, and for continuous RX reception at reference sensitivity level is 35mA. Total die size is 5.7mm
²
, of which 1.8mm
²
is occupied by RF, analog and PMU circuits.