2.4 GHz, 0.25 μM CMOS transmitter and receiver RFICs for wireless communications

2.4 GHz transmitter and receiver CMOS RFICs for an ISM-band RF transceiver are presented. The 2.4 GHz CMOS RF transceiver uses a single-mixer architecture. The RF is from 2.400 to 2.483 GHz and the IF is at 280 MHz. The transmitter RFIC includes a power amplifier (PA) with a diode linearizer and two T/R switches. The receiver RFIC contains a gain-controlled low noise amplifier (LNA) and a passive switching mixer. The RFICs are fabricated in a 0.25 μm 1P5M standard CMOS process; the measurements of the RFICs are performed using an FR-4 PCB test fixture. The receiver exhibits a conversion gain of 2 dB (without an IF amplifier), a noise figure of 6.2 dB and a sensitivity of -101 dBm (BER =10 - 5 with 384 kbps π/4-DQPSK digitally-modulated signal). For the transmitter, due to the loss of mixer and T/R switch, two driver PAs are connected to achieve enough gain. The transmitter exhibits a conversion gain of 7.8 dB, an output power of 11.5 dBm, and has 4.1 percent EVM and -32 dBc ACPR (384 kbps π/4-DQPSK signal with channel spacing 384 kHz) at the output power of 10 dBm.