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Low Power RF front end design for ISM 915MHz band using current re-use stacked topology

Karan Jain, Abishek Madhavan, Aswin Srinivasa Rao

Abstract

A current reuse topology for a fully integrated RF receiver front end is implemented. The Low noise Amplifier, Quadrature Mixer and Quadrature Voltage Controlled Oscillator are stacked up in a current reuse methodology (LMV cell) where the same bias current flows through all these blocks. This not only reduces power consumption, but also minimizes the issues with impedance matching across stages. Industrial, Scientific and Medical (ISM) band is a license-free band used in communication applications like Cordless phones, wireless LANs and Wireless sensor nodes. This design methodology is adapted to be used in the ISM 915MHz band. The carrier at 915MHz is down-converted to the Intermediate frequency of 20MHz. A trans-impedance amplifier is used as an intermediate frequency amplifier which amplifies the 20MHz signal to get a net conversion gain (from the RF input) of 40dB. The VCO achieves a phase noise of -115dBc@1MHz. The noise figure at the output of the mixer is 6.4dB. The S11 for the LNA is <-10dB. The total power consumption by the LMV cell is 3mW.

1. Kuang-Wei Cheng; Natarajan, K.; Allstot, D.J.; , "A Current Reuse Quadrature GPS Receiver in 0.13 m CMOS," Solid-State Circuits, IEEE Journal of , vol.45, no.3, pp.510-523, March 2010.
2. A. Liscidini, A. Mazzanti, R. Tonietto, L. Vandi, P. Andreani, and R.Castello, “Single-stage low-power quadrature RF receiver front-end: The LMV cell,” IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits, vol. 41, pp. 2832–2841, Dec. 2006.

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