A 180-nm CMOS 100MHz-1.2GHz Software-Defined Transceiver with Integrated Pre-Power Amplifier

As a method to realize multi-mode terminal for mobile and wireless communication standards, software-defined radio (SDR) has attracted intensive studies. A wideband wireless transceiver is designed in a 180-nm CMOS process for SDR, which can operate over a frequency range from 100MHz to 1.2GHz. The wideband RF front-end includes a low noise amplifier (LNA), a power amplifier (PA), mixers, a frequency synthesizer, a programmable intermediate frequency band pass filter (BPF) and a variable gain amplifier (VGA). The noise figure (NF) of the receiver is 2.2–3.9 dB thanks to the wideband LNA with noise cancellation. The transmitter can achieve a saturation power of more than 16.8 dBm over the operating frequency range. The overall power consumption for the whole system is more than 492mW with a power supply of 1.8 V.