A CMOS RF Transmitter For LTE Applications: Implementation and Simulation

Abstract

This paper presents the design of an RF front-end transmitter implemented in UMC 130nm CMOS technology and intended for LTE applications. The proposed transmitter is composed of LC voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO), up-conversion mixer, and power amplifier (PA). The LC VCO is based on differential structure with cross-coupled NMOS transistors which achieves low phase noise and low power consumption. Gilbert-mixer is considered in this work because of its high conversion gain, better linearity, and good isolation at the cost of a slight increase in noise Figure (NF) and power consumption. In addition, low-power consumption PA design is introduced in this paper. The implemented transmitter provides a saturated output power of 23.1dBm with a maximum power gain of 29.6 dB, a 21.5dBm output 1-dB compression point, and a power consumption of 172.5mw satisfying the requirements on LTE front end.