Quadrature VCO as a Subharmonic Mixer

This paper proposes two types of subharmonic RF receiver front-end (called LMV) where, in a single stage, quadrature voltage-controlled oscillator (QVCO) is stacked on top of a low noise amplifier. Since the QVCO itself plays the role of the single-balanced subharmonic mixer with the dc current reuse technique by stacking, the proposed topology can remove the RF mixer component in the RF front-end and thus reduce the chip size and the power consumption. Another advantage of the proposed topologies is that many challenges of the direct conversion receiver can be easily evaded with the subharmonic mixing in the QVCO itself. The intermediate frequency signal can be directly extracted at the center taps of the two inductors of the QVCO. Using a 65 nm complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology, the proposed subharmonic RF front-ends are designed. Oscillating at around 2.4 GHz band, the proposed subharmonic LMVs are compared in terms of phase noise, voltage conversion gain and double sideband noise figure. The subharmonic LMVs consume about 330 ㎼ dc power from a 1-V supply.