A 15mW −105dBm Image-Sparse-Sliding-IF Receiver with Transformer-Based on-Chip Q-Enhanced RF Matching Network for a 113dB-Link-Budget BLE 5.0 TRX

A low-power low-cost high-link-budget sliding IF (SIF) transceiver, which utilizes a new TRX matching network (RF I/O) and satisfies BLE 5.0 standard, is proposed. The proposed RF I/O realizes image rejection (IR) function at RX side without loss penalty by using an on-chip transformer, which enables a power amplifier (PA) to achieve an 8dBm-output power without requiring additional supply. Moreover, the proposed method enhances Q value of the transformer, thus further improving the RX's NF. By selecting interference-sparse marine radar's band of 3.1GHz as image frequency, the image tolerance of RX in actual environment can be remarkably improved. The RX achieves 6.0dB NF, 14dB image rejection ratio (IRR), −105dBm sensitivity with 15mW power consumption. The TX achieves 8dBm output power with 22% efficiency with a single supply. The TRX satisfies BLE 5.0 standard, and achieves link budget 113dB which is the best value known to date.