A 60–90 GHz Passive Mixer-First Receiver in 22-nm SOI CMOS

Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless communication systems are susceptible to the intermodulation of the multiple signals received and strong blockers, neces-sitating high in-band and out-of-band (OOB) linearity. This work introduces a mixer-first front-end architecture that in-corporates a trans-impedance amplifier (TIA) with a capacitive positive feedback technique to leverage second-order filtering, thus improving the resilience of the receiver (RX) to spectral blockers. The RX is designed using 22-nm FD-SOI technology and demonstrates excellent input matching across the frequency range of 60–90 GHz. Moreover, the RX achieves a conversion gain of 19 dB while maintaining a moderate noise figure (NF). This gain is accomplished by cascading an amplifier to the TIA and employing the complementary derivative superposition technique to enhance the in-band input third-order intercept point (IIP3). The RX exhibits minimum in-band IIP3 of 4.9 dBm and OOB IIP3 of 42 dBm. indica ting improved linearity performance.

I. Introduction

Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) is extensively employed by 5G new radio (NR) systems to fulfill the extreme data rate requirements of the next-generation communication networks. The E-band (60–90 GHz), a millimeter-wave frequency range, is utilized for high-capacity backhaul and point-to-point communication. MIMO is implemented in the E-band communication systems to increase the data capac-ity and reliability of the wireless connection. However, the MIMO receivers are susceptible to inter-modulation and cross-modulation distortion caused by the coherent addition of the multiple received signals at each element of the phased array. The phased arrays don't offer any suppression of the third-order intermodulation products [1]. Consequently, it becomes necessary to ensure high IIP3 for each channel in the receiver. On the other hand, single-channel SNR requirements can be relaxed due to noise averaging across the array.