A 0.18μm CMOS implementation of a low power, fully differential RF front-end for FM-UWB based P-PAN receivers

This paper describes the design of a fully differential RF front-end for a low data rate FM-UWB based P-PAN receiver. The RF front-end includes an ultra-wideband LNA and a wideband RF demodulator. The receiver is designed using a standard six metal layer 0.18 mu m CMOS process. The differentially configured LNA provides a 30 dB bandpass gain and offers a 2 GHz -10 dB bandwidth. Based on a passive delay component a differential RF delay-line configuration is employed to implement the RF demodulator. A special delay structure is introduced to suppress any phase imbalance in the input signal and thereby improve the gain of the demodulator. Transistor level simulations are presented in the paper and the results show that the proposed RF front-end approach can present 30 dB + 50 dBV-1 gain with a 2 GHz -10 dB bandwidth and an overall noise figure of 6 dB. The total current consumption is around 10 mA using a 1.8 V power supply.