Design of High Dynamic Range HBT N-Path Receivers With Dual-Resonant-Mode LO Drive

A millimeter (mm)-wave widely-tunable mixer-first noise-cancelling receiver is demonstrated in 130-nm SiGe BiCMOS. The receiver simultaneously achieves 8.9–9.7-dBm out-of-band (OOB) B1dB and 8.55–10.9-dB NF across a 20–40-GHz operating range, enabled by four techniques highlighted in this article: 1) a dual-resonant-mode local oscillator (LO) buffer for lower power, higher frequency non-overlapping pulse generation; 2) wide-frequency-tunable quadrature generation; 3) linear periodic time-varying (LPTV) feedback technique to enable impedance transparency in HBT N-path mixers with a minimum noise penalty; and 4) an adapted noise-cancellation architecture for reducing the effect of LO noise mechanisms on the overall receiver noise figure in HBT-based N-path receivers. The presented techniques are supported by theoretical analyses, a discussion of critical layout considerations, and measurements from an integrated prototype. While we demonstrate these techniques for SiGe HBTs, they are applicable to other HBT technologies (i.e., InP) and may be generalized to FET/HEMT technologies operated in an active mode.