A 1-mW current reuse quadrature RF front-end for GPS L1 band in 0.18µm CMOS

Abstract

A new low-power current reuse topology is proposed for the GPS receiver's RF front-end that combines the higher conversion gain and suppressed noise figure characteristics of cascade structures with the low power consumption of stacked architectures. The presented circuit, called 1.5-stage LMV cell, consists of LNA, Mixer and VCO (LMV) in such a formation that boosts LNA gain and suppresses mixer's noise figure by cascading the two stages while reusing their currents in the two stacked quadrature VCOs and placing the mixer's upper tree switches at the vicinity of on-off regions. The circuit is designed and its layout is generated in TSMC 0.18μm CMOS technology. Post-layout simulations using Spectre RF exhibit a 49 dB conversion gain, 5 dB noise figure and -108 dBc/Hz open loop phase noise while consuming only 1 mA current from a 1 V supply voltage.