A MedRadio Receiver Front-End With Wide Energy-Quality Scalability Through Circuit and Architecture-Level Reconfigurations

Abstract

In this paper, the design considerations for a wide-range energy-quality (EQ) scalable RF wireless front-end are presented. A thorough design-space exploration for a MedRadio receiver highlights the critical circuit and architecture-level tuning knobs that are effective in achieving wide EQ scalability. Power-performance scaling limits of the low noise amplifier and frequency translation element are individually identified. Architectural level tuning by switching between operating modes are implemented to overcome single RF functional block’s adaptivity range bottleneck. For an EQ-scalable MedRadio receiver operating at 400 MHz, designed in a 65-nm TSMC CMOS process, two decades of tradeoff in power consumption and input referred noise are achieved through circuit and architecture-level reconfigurations. A wide-range of energy-scalability ( $16~\mu \text{W}$ to 1 mW) is demonstrated as noise figure varies from 28 to 9 dB.