2.4 GHz BiCMOS front-end receiver design driven by gain, linearity and noise trade-offs

This paper evaluates the design trade-offs for a high frequency RF front-end. The main three factors - gain, linearity, noise - influence is analyzed, in order to get an optimum performance for the receiver. The analysis is focused on the weight of the main blocks (the low noise amplifier - LNA and the mixer) parameters oil the RF frontend operation. These main parameters are the down conversion gain, input referred third order interception point (iIP3) and noise figure (NF). The high performance RF process IBM's BiCMOS-6HP Si-Ge 0.25 /spl mu/m was used to design the circuit.