A Design Methodology for Wideband Current-Reuse Receiver Front-Ends Aimed at Low-Power Applications

Abstract

This work gives a design perspective on low-power and wideband RF-to-Baseband current-reuse receivers (CRR). The proposed CRR architecture design shares a single supply and biasing current among both LNTA and baseband circuits to reduce power consumption. The work discusses topology selection and a suitable design procedure of the low noise transconductance amplifier (LNTA), down-conversion passive-mixer, active-inductor (AI) and TIA circuits. Layout considerations are also discussed. The receiver was simulated in 130 nm CMOS technology and occupies an active area of 0.025 mm2. It achieves a wideband input matching of less than −10 dB from 0.8 GHz to 3.4 GHz. A conversion-gain of 39.5 dB, IIP3 of −28 dBm and a double-sideband (DSB) NF of 5.6 dB is simulated at a local-oscillator (LO) frequency of 2.4 GHz and an intermediate frequency (IF) of 10 MHz, while consuming 1.92 mA from a 1.2 V supply.