An Ultra Wideband Transmitter for 0.1 to 12 GHz Software Defined Radios

An ultra wideband direct-conversion transmitter for software defined radios is presented in this work. The proposed transmitter is designed to operate with up to 200 MHz modulated signals and carrier frequencies ranging from 100 MHz to 12 GHz. A voltage-mode passive mixer performs relatively linear up-conversion with wide bandwidth. Inductive peaking further enhances the bandwidth of several circuit blocks to enable operation up to 12 GHz, with the capability of delivering up to +6 dBm saturated power over the entire band. The transmitter is fabricated on a TSMC 65-nm CMOS process and measurement results up to 2.5 GHz show good match with simulated performance. It occupies an overall die area of 1.5 mm X 1.1 mm, including pads.