A Broadband CMOS RF Front-End for Universal Tuners Supporting Multi-Standard Terrestrial and Cable Broadcasts Donggu Im, Student Member , IEEE

Abstract

A wideband CMOS highly linear and low noi se RF front-end including inductor -less wideband LNA, integrated passive tunable filter, harmonic rejection mixer (HRM), and loop-through ampli fier (LTA) is proposed for universal tuners. The proposed inductor-less w ideband LNA shows a gain range greater than 55 dB with fin eg a i ns t e pl e s st h a n0 . 5d Bw h i l e achieving higher linearity and lowe rn o i s efigure (NF), as com- pared with the traditional resisti ve/active feedback LNA through as o u r c ef o l l o w e r( S F ) .T h ei n t e g r a t e dt u n a b l efilter covers the en- tire VHF bands without dividi ng the frequency range by multiple filters. By adopting tunable filter and HRM simultaneously, the overall harmonic rejection ratio (HRR) of over 65 dBc is obtained. T h ea c t i v ef e e d b a c kL T Au tilizing a complementary characteristic of NMOS and PMOS is proposed for supporting multiple tuner applications. The proposed RF front-end achieves a maximum voltage gain of 42 dB, a minimum NF of 4.7 dB, and CTB and CSO of under 60 dBc. The power consumption including the LTA is 144 mW at a 1.8 V supply and the chip area is 1.43 mm .