A Fully Integrated Discrete-Time Superheterodyne Receiver

The zero/low intermediate frequency (IF) receiver (RX) architecture has enabled full CMOS integration. As the technology scales and wireless standards become ever more challenging, the issues related to time-varying dc offsets, the second-order nonlinearity, and flicker noise become more critical. In this paper, we propose a new architecture of a superheterodyne RX that attempts to avoid such issues. By exploiting discrete-time (DT) operation and using only switches, capacitors, and inverter-based gm-stages as building blocks, the architecture becomes amenable to further scaling. Full integration is achieved by employing a cascade of four complex-valued passive switched-cap-based bandpass filters sampled at 4× of the local oscillator rate that perform IF image rejection. Channel selection is achieved through an equivalent of the seventh-order filtering. A new twofold noise-canceling low-noise transconductance amplifier is proposed. Frequency domain analysis of the RX is presented by the proposed DT model. The RX is wideband and covers 0.4-2.9 GHz with a noise figure of 2.9-4 dB. It is implemented in 65-nm CMOS and consumes 48-79 mW.