Design considerations for direct-conversion receivers

This paper describes the issues and tradeoffs in the design and monolithic implementation of direct-conversion receivers and proposes circuit techniques that can alleviate the drawbacks of this architecture. Following a brief study of heterodyne and image-reject topologies, the direct-conversion architecture is introduced and effects such as dc offset, I/Q mismatch, even-order distortion, flicker noise, and oscillator leakage are analyzed. Related design techniques for amplification and mixing, quadrature phase calibration, and baseband processing are also described.