Wideband inductorless CMOS RF front-end for LTE receivers

Abstract

This paper presents a new design of inductorless wideband front-end receiver using 130 nm CMOS technology for LTE bands of 0.7 GHz to 3 GHz. The RF front-end receiver consists of the microstrip antenna, self-bias resistive feedback low-noise amplifier, active balun and folded mixer architecture. The miniature antenna provides good matching results for the entire band of interest. Optimization of low-noise amplifier using linearization technique followed by NMOS switches mixer stage are effectively used to achieve maximum gain, low noise figure, and low power consumption. The designed receiver exhibits a maximum gain of 22 dB, maximum noise figure of 7.5 dB, minimum 3rd order intercept point (IIP3) of −9.2 dBm, and DC power consumption of 22 mW at 1.2 V power supply. Using these optimizations, our proposed receiver can be a good candidate for LTE applications.