Power dissipation minimization in RF front ends

Abstract

Abstract-In mobile and portable wireless devices, it is important to have low power dissipation so as to maximize battery life. As the overall power dissipation of a device is dominated by the radio frequency (RF) front end rather than the digital circuit, low-power RF front end design has become a very hot topic in both research and implementation. In this paper, we propose a design method to minimize the power dissipation of a RF front end. Specifically, given the overall specifications of gain, linearity and noise figure of a front end, we derive the optimal specification for each building block of the RF front end such that the overall power dissipation is minimized. By using a specific example of a front end consisting of a couple of cascaded circuit blocks using 90nm CMOS technology, we demonstrate that significant reduction in power dissipation can be achieved using the proposed design method.