PROJECT TITLE :

Wideband Receivers: Design Challenges, Tradeoffs and State-of-the-Art

ABSTRACT:

A universal wideband receiver supporting multi-band multi-commonplace wireless Communications offers the prospective for cost reduction and suppleness improvement of next-generation handheld devices. Unlike the traditional narrowband receivers that are tailored for specific standards and are assisted by dedicated SAW filters to restrict the input signals (frequency and power), SAW-less wideband receivers are fully exposed to the dynamic spectrum conditions, stimulating circuits and systems innovation to surmount the challenges whereas maintaining the integration level, power and area efficiencies. This article outlines the planning challenges and elementary tradeoffs of wideband receivers, and describes how they'll be addressed by 3 circuit techniques: noise cancelling, -path filtering and -path mixing improving the noise figure, out-of-band linearity and harmonic-rejection capability, respectively. Case studies of silicon-proven solutions representing the state-of-the-art are included, illustrating the professionals and cons of various implementation and combination of such 3 techniques. Architecturally those wideband receivers can be classified as: i) current-mode passive-mixer receiver; ii) voltage-mode passive-mixer receiver; iii) current-mode active-mixer receiver, and iv) current-mode parallel active/passive-mixer receiver. This article ought to be relevant to junior designers getting ready to jump-start in this evolving field, and experience designers intended to collectively compare the existing solutions before any development.