ECE 265A – Winter 2019

Lecture 16
Receiver Architecture (3)
Direct-conversion Rx (b)
Vincent Leung

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 Outline

 Direct-conversion receivers
o LO leakage, DC offsets (last lecture)
o 2nd-order distortion
• Mixer Feedthrough,
o Flicker (1/f) noise
o IQ (LO) mismatches
o Mixing spurs (not important for homodyne Rx)

Ref: Razavi text: page 187-196

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 Homodyne: IMD2 – why does it matter?
 Recall that in homodyne (direct-conversion) receiver, the desired signal is
down-converted to DC
 Given two strong interferers at and , the LNA 2nd-order distortion:
o Creates a “beat” tone at (near dc)
o The beat tone is benign* since mixer will up-convert it (back) to RF
 But if the mixer exhibits a finite feedthrough (no freq translation)
o Caused by mixer/ LO asymmetry
o The beat tone will appear at baseband, corrupting the Rx signal

Beat component
(corrupting the down-
converted spectrum)

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 Mixer feedthrough in RZ switch
 The mixer feedthrough can be understood by analyzing the simple switch
circuit (from last lecture, page 11) :
o
𝟏
o
𝟐
 The 1/2 term (dc) in the single-ended LO “ ” allows IMD2 created by the
LNA to appear directly at the output.
o This single-ended passive switch is rarely used in practice.
o The issue can be easily fixed by applying a differential LO, as shown in
next page

1
0
1 𝟐 2 2
𝑆(𝑡) = + cos 𝜔 𝑡 − cos 3𝜔 𝑡 + cos 5𝜔 𝑡 + …
2 𝝅 3𝜋 5𝜋
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 Single-balanced mixer
 Known as the “single-balanced” mixer, the differential LO “commutates” a
single input to two outputs
o Input is “single-ended”, LO/ output are balanced (differential)
𝟏
o , 𝟐
𝟏
o , 𝟐

o , ,

 As such, the feedthrough is cancelled, the conversion gain is twice of the

circuit in the last page.

_
1
-1
𝟒 4 4
cos 𝜔 𝑡 − cos 3𝜔 𝑡 + cos 5𝜔 𝑡 + …
𝝅 3𝜋 5𝜋
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 2 Nonideal feedthrough mechanisms
 The cancellation is sensitive to asymmetries. If there is any mismatch, a net
feedthrough can arise in the differential output
 For example, the switches may exhibit a mismatch between their on-
resistances ( , , ):

o , , 𝒓𝒐𝒏,𝒑 𝒓𝒐𝒏,𝒎

 Or for example, the LO may not have exactly 50%-duty cycle ( ):

𝑻𝒅𝒖𝒕𝒚 𝑻 𝑻𝒅𝒖𝒕𝒚
o , , 𝑻 𝑻
 In both cases, there is a finite mixer feedthrough.
𝒓𝒐𝒏,𝒑
Non-50% duty cycle LO

+ 𝑇 > 𝑇 ⁄2

_ 𝑣
𝒓𝒐𝒏,𝒎 𝑇
𝑇−𝑇

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 IIP2 Calculation
 What would be the IIP2 of such LNA-mixer system*?
 As in lecture 9 (page 16), given a 2-tone blocker (at and ), the
amplifier’s linear and beat tones are:
o [in V]
 Suppose the mixer conversion gain is , while the feedthrough (of the
beat tone) will be (where ), the IIP2 of the LNA-mixer will be
given by:
o
𝟏 𝜶𝟏
o 𝑰𝑰𝑷𝟐 [in V]
𝒌 𝜶𝟐
 Apparently, IIP2 improves for:
o Smaller (that is, more linear LNA), or
o Smaller (less mixer beat-tone feedthrough )
feedthrough

𝑉 (𝑡)
* Please do not confuse this 𝛼 𝑥+𝛼 𝑥 𝐿𝑃𝐹
with the “cascaded” IIP2 formulation 𝑦(𝑡)
discussed in Lecture 9, page 19-20.

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 Demod of AM signal by 2nd-order term

 We don’t need two-tone blockers to generate a beat-frequency.

 “Second-order distortion can demodulate amplitude-modulation” (*)
 A RF signal with variable envelope (QAM, OFDM) can be denoted as:
o
o where denotes the envelope – it varies slowly as compared to
 The 1st and 2nd-order terms of the amplifier are given by:
[ ( )]
o
 Both of the terms:
o and are like the low-frequency “beat-tone”. They
may corrupt the down-converted signal.
𝐴 + 𝑎(𝑡) feedthrough
𝐴 𝑉 (𝑡)
t
𝛼 𝑥+𝛼 𝑥 𝐿𝑃𝐹
𝑦(𝑡)

cos 𝜔𝑳𝑶 𝑡

* In fact, this is one of the active mixer approaches

© Leung, ECE265A Winter 2019 (see Lecture 15, page 12: the upper figure ) 8
 IIP2 Mitigation: AC coupling
 Fortunately, the beat generated by LNA can be quite easily removed
by ac coupling
o A capacitor is placed between the LNA output to mixer input
o See also the example of Lecture 11, page 9 (Literature survey).

Beat component
rejected

 The real problem is actually the IIP2 of the mixer itself

o The interferers get amplified by the LNA, and hit the mixer hard
o This topic will be discussed in details in 265B

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 Flicker (1/f) Noise in Homodyne Rx
 For direct-conversion receiver, since the signal is centered around
DC, it an be substantially corrupted by flicker noise
o RF and mixer conversion gains cannot be made arbitrarily high to
overcome this, due to blocker linearity requirements
o Mixers (the active type) itself generates flicker noise (at its
output), and so do the baseband circuits.
 Consider the noise spectrum (in dBm/Hz)
𝜶
o Two components: Flicker noise ( 𝟏/𝒇 ); thermal noise ( 𝒕𝒉 )
𝒇
o At the corner frequency* ( 𝒄 ) they equal. So, 𝒕𝒉 𝒄
 Say, the signal has RF channel bandwidth* of 𝑩𝑾
 Also assume we can safely ignore noise
𝒇
below 𝑩𝑾 (since they vary so slowly) at baseband
𝟏𝟎𝟎𝟎

* Don’t confuse this fc

with the (RF) carrier
frequency. Also note 2fBW at RF
the that “baseband bandwidth
= 0.5* RF bandwidth”.

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 Flicker noise calculation

 The total noise power between to is given by:

o , [note: in W = (W/Hz*Hz) ]

o ,

o , [Note: ]

o ,

 Apparently, the 1st term is the flicker noise contribution, while the second
term the thermal.
 The flicker noise raises the thermal noise (evaluated over the signal
bandwidth) by the ratio of:
.
,
o
, _ 𝜶 = 𝑺𝒕𝒉 𝒇𝒄
𝑷𝒏,𝒕𝒐𝒕𝒂𝒍 𝒇𝒄 𝒇𝒄
o
𝑷𝒏,𝒕𝒉_𝒐𝒏𝒍𝒚 𝒇𝑩𝑾 𝒇𝑩𝑾

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 Flicker noise – discussion
,
o
, _

 The higher the ratio, the higher the “flicker noise penalty”
 Example: assume a flicker noise corner frequency of 200 kHz
o For baseband bandwidth = 10 MHz, (say, for 20MHz LTE)
, . .
• (Not too big a deal)
, _

o If the baseband bandwidth = 2.5 MHz, (say, for 5MHz LTE)

, . .
• (Much bigger deal!)
, _ . .

 A good receiver design will maximize the gain in the RF frontend (linearity
permitting), such that 𝒕𝒉 is dominated
For good Rx design,
by the source noise, and to lesser this is dominated by
extent, the LNA and mixer noise. “gained up” source
noise:
 Therefore, the higher the RF gain, the (~4𝑘𝑇𝑅 𝐺 𝐺 )
higher the 𝒕𝒉 *, the lower the 𝒄 (less
flicker noise penalty)
* Thus relatively less baseband circuit noise contribution. To be
studied in Rx “level diagram”, time permitting.
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 Flicker noise for GSM

 GSM has very small signal bandwidth (compared to previous examples)

o This standard should be adversely impacted by flicker noise
 Following the same assumption.
o Note that the baseband channel bandwidth (100 kHz) is even lower
than the flicker noise corner frequency
 The total (flicker + thermal) and thermal noises are given by:
o ,

o , _
 Therefore, the so-called “flicker noise penalty” is:
, .
o
, _ 𝜶 = 𝑺𝒕𝒉 𝒇𝒄
 As expected, the penalty is
much more severe than the
previous 2 examples.
o The solution is called
“low-IF” receiver, to be
discussed. 𝒇𝒄
© Leung, ECE265A Winter 2019 𝑩𝑾 < 𝒇𝒄 13
 I/Q Mismatch in quadrature downconversion

 Quadrature downconversion is needed to demodulate asymmetrically-

modulated signal to zero IF (Lecture 14, page 24-25)
 I/Q mismatches are caused by:
o Amplitude (or gain*) and phase errors of the quadrature LO’s, and
o Gain and phase errors of the baseband circuits (LPF, VGA) – not
discussed here.

Example: Lecture 11, page 9

The terms “amplitude error", “gain error” or “magnitude error”

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are used interchangeably.
 I/Q Mismatch in Homodyne Rx

 I/Q mismatches are worse in direct-conversion Rx (than dual-conversion

Rx) because:
1. At higher frequency, propagation mismatch causes more phase error
o Delay (propagation) mismatch of 10ps between LOI and LOQ
corresponds to 18o at 5GHz*, but only 3.6o at 1GHz. Simply:
o and
/ /
2. There is more inherent circuit (LO divider) mismatch at higher freq
o In 265B, we will see that the divider should be sized to operate at its
self-oscillation freq (“bathtub curve”). Higher-freq calls for smaller
devices, thus more transistor mismatches
Direct-conversion Rx Dual-conversion Rx

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 I/Q Mismatch

 Let’s model the gain and phase mismatches on the LO by (where the factor
of 2 is only to simplify the results later):
∈
o ,
∈
o ,

 Given an RF (QPSK) signal of:

o
 Multiplying them, and after low-pass filtering, we have:
∈ ∈
o , ( , ideally)
∈ ∈
o , ( , ideally)

𝒙𝑳𝑶,𝑰

𝒙𝑳𝑶,𝑸

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 I/Q Mismatch – mag. or phase errors
∈ ∈ ∈ ∈
 𝑥 , 𝑡 = 𝑎 1+ cos −𝑏 1+ sin( ) 𝑥 , 𝑡 = −𝑎 1 − sin +𝑏 1− cos( )

 Special case (1): amplitude error only: ( )

∈ ∈
o , ; and ,

o the baseband symbols are scaled differently in amplitude

Q

 Special case (2): phase error only: ( )

o , ; and ,

o the baseband symbols are corrupted by the symbols in the other output
Q

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