A broadband low-noise wide dynamic range SiGe front-end receiver IC for multi-band access points

A broadband, low-noise, wide dynamic range front-end receiver IC is reported. It uses 0.25 μm SiGe BiCMOS process technology and consists of broadband variable gain low noise amplifiers (VGLNAs), down-conversion mixers, step attenuators, and buffer amplifiers. It can receive triple-band signals concurrently, and the chip size is only 3mm × 3mm. Its measured noise figure was under 3.2 dB and the measured conversion gain was around 30 dB in the broad frequency range from 300 MHz to 3 GHz. It has a wide gain control range of around 100 dB; 50 dB is controlled by the VGLNA and the step attenuator, and 50 dB by the mixer with novel relative power control method using dual LO signal. The gain control enhances the input 1dB compression point from -40 dBm to -21 dBm.