A Single-Stage Low-Power Double-Balanced Mixer Merged with LNA and VCO

Abstract

This paper proposes three types of single stage low-power RF front-end, called double-balanced LMVs, by merging LNA, mixer, and voltagecontrolled oscillator (VCO) exploiting a series LC (SLC) network. The low intermediate frequency (IF) or baseband signal can be directly sensed at the drain nodes of the VCO switching transistors by adding a simple resistorcapacitor (RC) low-pass filter (LPF). By adopting a double-balanced mixer topology, the strong leakage of the local oscillator (LO) at the IF output is effectively suppressed. Using a 65 nm CMOS technology, the proposed double-balanced LMVs (DB-LMVs) are designed. Oscillating at around 2.4 GHz ISM band, the phase noise of the proposed three DB-LMVs is −111 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset frequency. The simulated voltage conversion gain is larger than 36 dB and the double-side band (DSB) noise figure (NF) is less than 7.7 dB. The DB-LMVs consume only 0.2 mW dc power from 1-V supply voltage.

A Single-Stage Quadrature LMVs

“…For highly integrated low-power receiver front-end, a current reuse technique is typically chosen across different functional blocks. A popular method is cascoding the mixer on top of the input stage of the low-noise amplifier (LNA), while less frequent is stacking mixer and voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) [1][2][3][4][5]. 125 to the input port of the current source.…”