A Wideband Millimeter-Wave CMOS Receiver Using a Reconfigurable Low-Noise Amplifier With a 3-Winding Transformer Load

This article presents a CMOS millimeter-wave (mm-wave) wideband image-reject (IR) receiver using a reconfigurable low-noise amplifier (LNA) with a 3-winding transformer load in 22-nm fully depleted silicon-on-insulator (FDSOI). The complete analysis of the proposed 3-winding transformer load is presented, where the location of the poles and zeros and also the equation for the first port, self-impedance (<inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$Z_{11}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>) are calculated and a design strategy along with a comparison with the conventional double-tuned transformer load is performed. Based on this approach, an mm-wave wideband/reconfigurable receiver is presented with three major contributions including: 1) wideband/reconfigurable frequency mode operation; 2) canceling interfere signals right after LNA to relax mixer linearity requirements; and 3) on-chip image-rejection using a three-stage resistor-capacitor (RC)-capacitor-resistor (CR) filter with tunable resistors for optimum operation. The 3-dB bandwidth in wideband mode is from 21.5 to 32.5 GHz with a peak gain of 45.5 dB at 22.5 GHz, and for both low-frequency and high-frequency reconfigurable modes, it is from 21.5 to 26.5 GHz with a peak gain of 45.45 dB at 22 GHz and from 27 to 32 GHz with a peak gain of 46.58 dB at 29 GHz, respectively. The measured noise figure (NF) value shows a minimum of 2.9 dB at 30 GHz. The image rejection is better than 30 dB for the 19–34-GHz range and the minimum <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\text {OP}_{\text {1dB}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> is -2.8 dBm over the same frequency range. The entire chip has a power consumption of 94.8 mW with the dimensions of <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$2.331\times 0.756$ </tex-math></inline-formula> mm excluding the pads.