A triple-mode fractional-N frequency synthesizer with a noise-filter voltage controlled oscillator（VCO） for WCDMA/Bluetooth/ZigBee applications has been implemented in 0.18-μm RF-CMOS technology.The proposed synthesizer achieves a good phase noise lower than-80 dBc/Hz in band and-115 dBc/Hz @ 1 MHz for the three modes, and only draws 21 mA from a 1.8 V supply.It has a high hardware sharing and a small size, only 1.5 × 1.4 mm2.The system architecture, circuit design, and measured results are also presented.
An automatic IQ phase calibration method implemented in a 2.4GHz direct conversion receiver is proposed. It uses a delay locked loop （DLL） with a proposed quadrature phase detector to greatly reduce the phase error. The receiver is fabricated in a 0.18μm CMOS process. Measurements show that the IQ phase error can be calibrated within 1°,which satisfies the system requirement.
A 13bit,pipelined analog-to-digital converter （ADC） designed to achieve high linearity is described. The high linearity is realized by using the passive capacitor error-averaging technique to calibrate the capacitor mismatch error, a gain-boosting opamp to minimize the finite gain error and gain nonlinearity,a bootstrapping switch to reduce the switch on-resistor nonlinearity, and an anti-disturb design to reduce the noise from the digital supply. This ADC is implemented in 0.18μm CMOS technology and occupies a die area of 3.2mm^2 , including pads. Measured performance includes - 0.18/ 0.15LSB of differential nonlinearity, -0.35/0.5LSB of integral nonlinearity, 75.7dB of signal-to-noise plus distortion ratio （SNDR） and 90. 5 dBc of spurious-free dynamic range （SFDR） for 2.4MHz input at 2.5MS/s. At full speed conversion （5MS/s） and for the same 2.4MHz input, the measured SNDR and SFDR are 73.7dB and 83.9 dBc, respectively. The power dissipation including output pad drivers is 21mW at 2.5MS/s and 34mW at 5MS/s,both at 2.7V supply.
A low phase noise quadrature oscillator using the new injection locked technique is proposed. The incident signal is directly injected into the common-source connection of the sub-harmonic oscillator. In principle, the phase noise performance of the quadrature output is better than the sub-harmonic oscillator itself. The quadrature oscillator is implemented in a 0. 25μm CMOS process. Measurements show the proposed oscillator could achieve a phase noise of --130dBc/Hz at 1MHz offset from 1. 13GHz carrier while only drawing an 8.0mA current from the 2.5V power supply.
A 2. 4GHz CMOS monolithic transceiver front-end for IEEE 802. llb wireless LAN applications is presented. The receiver and transmitter are both of superheterodyne structure for good system performance. The frontend consists of five blocks., low noise amplifier,down-converter, up-converter, pre-amplifier, and LO buffer. Their input/output impedance are all on-chip matched to 50 Ω except the down-converter which has open-drain outputs. The transceiver RF front-end has been implemented in a 0. 18μm CMOS process. When the LNA and the down-converter are directly connected, the measured noise figure is 5.2dB, the measured available power gain 12. 5dB, the input l dB compression point --18dBm,and the third-order input intercept point --7dBm. The receiver front-end draws 13.6mA currents from the 1.8V power supply. When the up-converter and pre-amplifier are directly connected, the measured noise figure is 12.4dB, the power gain is 23. 8dB, the output ldB compression point is 1.5dBm, and the third-order output intercept point is 16dBm. The transmitter consumes 27.6mA current from the 1.8V power supply.
A 2GHz differentially tuned CMOS monolithic LC-VCO is designed and fabricated in a 0.18μm CMOS process. The VCO has a 16.15% tuning range （from 1. 8998 to 2. 2335GHz） through a combination of analog and digital tuning techniques （4-bit binary switch-capacitor array）. The measured phase noise is - 118.17dBc/Hz at a 1MHz offset from a 2. 158GHz carrier. With the presented improved switch,the phase noise varies no more than 3dB at different digital control bits. The phase noise changes only by about 2dB in the tuning range because of the pn-junctions as the varactors. The VCO draws a current of about 2. lmA from a 1.8V power supply and works normally with a 1.5V power supply.
