A Double-Resistive Feedback Active Inductor based Receiver Frontend in 40 nm CMOS Process for 28-GHz Applications

Scaled MOSFETs are promising candidates for the implementation of transceiver at millimeter wave (mmWave) band frequencies due to its high unity gain frequency (f
T
). A floating active inductor (AI) based receiver frontend is investigated using 40 nm CMOS technology for 28 GHz frequency band. The proposed receiver comprises of 3-stage differential-ended LNA followed by quadrature mixer with RLC load using active inductor and IF gain stage. The active inductor has been designed using double-resistive feedback lossy gyrator-C topology. The receiver has been well optimized to attain an enhanced Figure of Merit (FOM) which has been used to estimate the consolidated overall receiver’s performance. The proposed receiver obtains 26.7 dB of conversion gain, 1.66 dB of noise figure and -19.35 dBm of IIP3 at 46.44 mW of power dissipation resulting in FOM value of 0.33. The proposed receiver occupies an area of 740*380 μm
²
. An improved performance of receiver makes it a suitable candidate for the mmWave band wireless applications.