ULP Radio Frequency Receiver for mm-wave Applications using 130 nm CMOS with Harvesting DC Supplies

Abstract This paper presents an Ultra-Low-Power (ULP), high integration, and wide bandwidth low-IF radio frequency receiver for millimeter-wave (mm-wave) applications using 130 nm CMOS technology. The proposed radio receiver is composed of a low-noise driver stage implemented using a complementary current reuse common gate with an active shunt feedback configuration, and an in-phase/quadrature of phase (I/Q) demodulator. The driver stage is used to expand the input RF impedance matching with acceptable linearity and gain at an ultra-low DC power dissipation. Moreover, the transformer coupling between the trans-conductance and switching stages is used to separate the DC bias between those two stages, the transformer is a high coupling factor wideband width 5-ports transformer. The DC supplies of the proposed mm-wave radio frequency receiver are implemented using two energy-harvesting voltage doubler designs. The proposed mm-wave radio receiver dissipates 0.475 mW from a 1.1 V DC supply and it has a power conversion gain (CG) of 6.3 dB with 3-dB frequency bandwidth of about 10 GHz (22-32GHz). The two energy-harvesting systems are implemented on the RO4003C substrate material and using the HSMS2852 Schottky diode. The first suggested RF voltage doubler with series resonance feedback and parallel resonance operates at dual frequency bands of 850 and 1400MHz and obtains a peak conversion efficiency of 59%, saturated output DC voltage is 2.5V, and the conversion efficiency is 40% at RF input power of -10dBm. The proposed voltage doubler achieves the required DC supply parameters (1.1V and 450uA) at an RF input power of 0dBm. Otherwise, the second suggested negative voltage rectifier has a maximum simulated conversion efficiency of 65%, saturated negative DC voltage is -3.5V at RF input power of 8 dBm, and the conversion efficiency is 45% at RF input power of -10dBm. The suggested negative voltage rectifier obtains the required DC supply parameters (-0.5V and no current condition) at -10dBm input power.