Design of Energy Efficient CMOS Receiver

Front-end Using 40nm RF-CMOS Technology

Abstract- This paper presents the design of an energy-

The design of the receiver frontend is one of the most critical
efficient receiver front-end using 40nm RF-CMOS
factors in achieving high system performance in a 60 GHz
technology. The proposed design is optimized for
wireless communication system. The receiver frontend is
low power consumption while maintaining high
responsible for receiving and amplifying the signal
linearity and sensitivity. The LNA is designed using a
transmitted by the transmitter. It should have a low noise
common-source configuration with inductive source
figure, high gain, and high linearity to achieve high system
degeneration to achieve high gain and linearity. The
performance. The receiver frontend was designed and
mixer is designed using a Gilbert cell topology with a
implemented using UMC 40 nm CMOS technology, which is
current reuse technique to reduce power
a cost-effective technology widely used in wireless
consumption. The low pass filter is designed using a
communication systems. The RF components have been
single-ended LC topology to provide sufficient
integrated and optimized to provide better performance for
attenuation of out-of-band noise. The results of the
the low-IF receiver.
study showed that the RF frontend receiver with a
differential LNA had better performance compared
to the single-ended LNA receiver. The design is
simulated using Cadence SpectreRF simulation tool. II. Architecture
The simulation results demonstrate that the
proposed design is suitable for use in wireless A. RF Front-end Circuit Fundamentals
communication systems. The design details support
The receiver front-end consists of a low-noise amplifier
this conclusion and indicate that the differential LNA
(LNA), a balun, a bandpass filter, and a mixer. The LNA is
receiver has the potential to be an effective solution
the first stage of the receiver front-end, and its primary
for wireless communication systems. Index terms –
function is to amplify the weak incoming signal while adding
SMOS, Mixer, LNA, Filter, Receiver, baseband.
as little noise as possible. The RF signal is received through
the antenna, and then amplified by low noise amplifier to
improve the signal-to-noise ratio. The output of low noise
I. Introduction amplifier is down-converted from RF band to IF or baseband
by a mixer. The reference frequency signal is provided by the
The increasing demand for high-speed wireless local oscillator. The front-end circuits are most important
blocks because they determine the selectivity and the
communication systems has led to the development of
sensitivity of the transceiver. And they are also the most
millimeter-wave technology. The 60 GHz frequency band is
difficult blocks to design because all of them work in very
considered to be suitable for short-range, high-bandwidth
high frequency band, and are very susceptible to noises and
wireless communication systems. However, designing a low-
interferences from inside or outside of the transceiver. In our
power, low-noise 60 GHz receiver frontend is a challenging
design, RF frequency = 3.5GHz , Lo frequency = 3.4GHz .
task. This paper presents the design and implementation of a
The bandpass filter is used to select the desired frequency
low-power 60 GHz receiver frontend using UMC 40nm
band and reject unwanted frequencies. The mixer is used to
CMOS technology.
down-convert the high-frequency signal to a lower frequency
In recent years, various research studies have been conducted that can be processed by the baseband circuitry.
on 60 GHz wireless communication systems. These systems
offer high-speed data transfer rates that are ten times faster
than traditional wireless communication systems. However,
they have limitations in terms of transmission distance due to
their high attenuation and absorption rates. Despite these
limitations, 60 GHz wireless communication systems have
significant advantages in various applications, such as high-
speed data transmission between devices and high-resolution
imaging. Fig. 1. Block diagram of the entire transceiver system.
 B. Low Noise amplifier

For low noise amplifiers (LNA) in receiving systems, it is

important to have low reflection coefficient at the input port,
so that the energy of the received signal is totally absorbed
and not reflected back causing an inefficient reception. The
performance of the antenna filter may also be dependent on
a well-defined termination.

Thereby it is important to present a well-defined resistance

to the antenna or antenna filter. LNA (Low Noise Amplifier)
is a key component of the RF front-end circuit. It is designed
to amplify the received signal while adding as little noise as
possible, in order to improve the overall signal-to-noise ratio
of the system. Each stage of the LNA consists of a transistor
Fig.2. Schematic of Three Stage LNA
amplifier and matching network to ensure optimal
impedance matching between the amplifier and the input
and output signals. Hence, in trying to achieve a good noise figure, most of the
design effort will generally focus on the first few stages. The
The first stage is typically a cascade amplifier, which consists design effort will generally focus on the first few stages.
of two transistors. The input signal is applied to the base of
the first transistor, and the second transistor serves as a load.
This stage typically provides a moderate gain with a C. Mixer
relatively high input impedance. The second stage is usually
a common-emitter amplifier, which provides high voltage In a radio transceiver system, it is important to prevent
gain. It is typically biased for class-A operation, which means unwanted signals outside the intended frequency range from
that it operates in the linear region of the transistor's interfering with other signals being transmitted or received.
characteristics. This stage provides a high gain with The receiver's selectivity can be achieved using a tunable filter
moderate input and output impedances.The third stage is or a superheterodyne receiver. While a tunable filter allows
typically a common-collector (also known as an emitter- demodulation to occur at a fixed lower frequency, creating a
follower) amplifier. This stage provides a low output simple tunable high-frequency filter is difficult.
impedance, which helps to drive the subsequent stages of the
A single mixer receiver can convert both the desired RF and
receiver circuit. This stage provides a moderate gain with a
the image frequency to the IF, but suppressing the image RF
low output impedance. The circuit provides high gain while
requires an RF filter before or between the RF amplifier and
it still gives a good control of the input impedance.
the mixer. However, the IF must be high enough for the image
In a low noise amplifier (LNA), the first stage is the input RF to be outside the receiver frequency band.
matching stage, which is critical for achieving a low noise
In this paper, the Gilbert cell mixer is chosen because it is a
factor. The input matching stage is responsible for matching
popular choice for RF and microwave applications due to its
the impedance of the LNA with the source impedance to
high linearity and low noise performance. The topology uses
maximize power transfer and minimize reflection losses,
two differential amplifiers, which are biased in opposite
which can cause noise. Also, NF is not much affected as it
directions, to convert the RF signal to an intermediate
mainly depends upon the first stage. This is shown by the
frequency (IF) signal. The mixer also employs a switching
Friis equation,
circuit that alternates between the RF and local oscillator
(LO) inputs to produce the desired frequency translation. It
can provide high conversion gain, low noise figure, and good
linearity. These characteristics are essential for the successful
Which simplifies to, operation of the receiver front-end in 60 GHz wireless
communication systems.

(1)
The low noise figure is particularly important for the LNA and
mixer, as it directly affects the receiver's sensitivity.
where F is the total noise factor G is power gain.
Additionally, the high linearity is crucial for minimizing the
It is clear that the system noise figure is in fact dominated by distortion and intermodulation products in the output signal,
the noise performance of the first few gain stages. which can degrade the receiver's performance.
 (2)

Both nonlinearity and noise increase with the number of

cascaded stages as shown by Eqs. (2) and (3).

(3)

where, AIIP3;i represent IIP3 of ith stage and AIIP3 the

overall linearity (IIP3). It is observed that IIP3 of each stage
is equivalently scaled down by the total gain preceding
that stage.

LNA-mixer pair being the primary bottleneck of RF

frontend performance elicits the pivotalness of their con
joined optimization so as to significantly enhance the
performance as well as sensitivity of the RF front-end. Each
stage is specifically designed and optimized to focus on
different aspects of performance, including noise figure,
gain, and linearity. In the third stage, a cascode NMOS and
PMOS in push-pull configuration is utilized, along with a
parallel RC circuit at the output to enhance linearity.

A low pass filter is likely included in the receiver frontend to

attenuate any high-frequency noise and signals that may be
present in the input signal. Since the receiver is designed for
Fig.3. Schematic of Gilbert Mixer 60 GHz operation, it is highly susceptible to out-of-band
noise and interference.

There are various receiver architectures available to

implement the receiver for 5G wireless system which are
super-heterodyne, image rejection, direct conversion
receiver, low IF receiver, digital IF receiver etc. Implementing
receiver in quadrature phases allows down conversion of
asymmetrically modulated signal without causing self-
corruption. Major blocks in the receiver front-end
architecture comprises low noise amplifier (LNA), voltage
controlled oscillator (VCO), Gilbert-cell mixer and filter. To
meet the desired specifications in terms of power, area and
cost, single integrated chip of transceiver is advocated.

In receiver frontend, quadrature down-conversion mixer

follows the LNA. Here, the LNA and mixer must show
wideband characteristics over the band of interest. In fact,
these blocks dominate the system linearity, noise
performance and determine performance requirements of
their adjacent blocks. There trade-off among various
performance parameters of receiver, can be collaboratively
assessed as Figure of Merit (FOM). Therefore, in order to
analyze the overall performance of the receiver frontend,
FOM has been determined using the formula stated below.
Fig.4. Schematic of Low Pass Filter
. The low pass filter helps to prevent these unwanted signals The low-pass filters selectively eliminate the sum frequency
from reaching the subsequent stages of the receiver, where components arising from the mixing operations. The output
they could potentially cause distortion or other issues. frequency is the sum of the two input frequencies
Additionally, the low pass filter can help to reduce the overall
noise figure of the receiver frontend, which is an important
parameter for maintaining sensitivity and performance.
After a low-pass filter, the signal is ready to be put into ADC

Fig. 5. Proposed Receiver were integrated with three stage LNA, Gilbert Mixer, and Low-Pass Filter

RESULT

The RF receiver frontend using UMC 40 nm CMOS

technology was successfully designed using Cadence Spectre
RF simulator to evaluate the performance of the LNA and
mixer circuits. The performance of the RF receiver frontend
was characterized through measurements and simulations.
It achieved good performance in terms of key metrics such
as sensitivity, linearity, noise figure, and power
consumption. The quadrature mixer is based on a Gilbert
cell topology, which provides good linearity and high
conversion gain.
CONCLUSION REFRENCES

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