A High IIP2 SAW-Less Superhetero-dyne Receiver with Multi-Stage Harmonic Rejection

In this paper, we propose and demonstrate the first fully integrated surface acoustic wave (SAW)-less superheterodyne receiver (RX) for 4G cellular applications. The RX operates in discrete-time domain and introduces various innovations to simultaneously improve noise and linearity performance while reducing power consumption: a highly linear wideband noise-canceling low-noise transconductance amplifier (LNTA), a blocker-resilient octal charge-sharing bandpass filter, and a cascaded harmonic rejection circuitry. The RX is implemented in 28-nm CMOS and it does not require any calibration. It features NF of 2.1-2.6 dB, an immeasurably high input second intercept point for closely-spaced or modulated interferers, and input third intercept point of 8-14 dBm, while drawing only 22-40 mW in various operating modes.