A Differential Voltage-controlled Oscillator as a Single-balanced Mixer

This paper proposes a low power radio frequency receiver front-end where, in a single stage, singlebalanced mixer and voltage-controlled oscillator are stacked on top of low noise amplifier and re-use the dc current to reduce the power consumption. In the proposed topology, the voltage-controlled oscillator itself plays the dual role of oscillator and mixer by exploiting a series inductor-capacitor network. Using a 65 nm complementary metal oxide semiconductor technology, the proposed radio frequency front-end is designed and simulated. Oscillating at around 2.4 GHz frequency band, the voltage-controlled oscillator of the proposed radio frequency front-end achieves the phase noise of ‒72 dBc/Hz, ‒93 dBc/Hz, and ‒113 dBc/Hz at 10KHz, 100KHz, and 1 MHz offset frequency, respectively. The simulated voltage conversion gain is about 25 dB. The double-side band noise figure is ‒14.2 dB, ‒8.8 dB, and ‒7.3 dB at 100 KHz, 1 MHz and 10 MHz offset. The radio frequency front-end consumes only 96 μW dc power from a 1-V supply.