Page 1 ECE1371 Term Paper RF Receiver Systems and Circuits Dennis Ma I. Introduction In the past decade, portable wireless communication systems have experienced tremendous growth. Such rapid growth has created demand for portable wireless devices that are smaller, lighter, cheaper and of higher performance than ever, and this drives IC designers and engineers to innovate new system architectures and circuit topologies. One goal is to build RF receiver IC’s that has low power consumption, high sensitivity and wide dynamic range, and to reduce the number of off-chip passive components in the circuit. This paper therefore focuses on the receiver portion of a wireless device, providing a review of conventional receiver architectures as well as some of the latest research in RF receiver IC’s is provided. The conclusion at the end of the paper also discusses the trend in future RF receiver design. II. Receiver Architectures This section describes three common receiver architectures: heterodyne, homodyne and image-reject, all of which have different advantages and drawbacks. When designing a RF receiver, the choice of architecture is primarily determined by criteria including complexity, cost, power dissipation and the number of external components [1]. Heterodyne is the architecture that was selected for most of the cellular handsets in the past [2], but as IC process and technology evolve, other approaches, such as homodyne, have also become a plausible solution to some of the design problems [1]. Page 2 A. Heterody ne Receiv ers A simplified block diagram of a heterodyne receiver is shown in figure 1. The incoming RF signal from the antenna is first filtered by a band select filter that removes the...
