A Simultaneous Dual-Carrier Transformer-Coupled Passive Mixer-First Receiver Front-End Supporting Blocker Suppression

A high dynamic range N-path passive mixer-first receiver architecture capable of simultaneously down-converting two arbitrary bands through a single RF port is presented. The architecture consists of two passive mixers arranged in a series configuration with a transformer front-end to minimize cross-loading between mixers while still providing impedance transparency and associated interference suppression for both bands. A four-phase demonstration in a 16-nm FinFET process operating from 2.8 to 4.3 GHz achieved 6.8–9.7-dB noise figure (NF), 8.9-dBm out-of-band (OOB) blocker compression (B1dB), and 18.6-dBm OOB input-referred third-order intercept point (IIP3) with 25–28 mW of power consumption per channel. When one of the mixers and the corresponding LO are configured to target a blocker, up to 14.4-dBm OOB-B1dB and 27.6-dBm OOB-IIP3 is achieved. This article elaborates on the analysis and design of the initial prototype and presents a new eight-phase prototype using the same general architecture but with improved performance. The new design operating from 2.6 to 3.9 GHz achieves 4.0–7.6-dB NF, 12.5-dBm OOB-B1dB, and 22.1-dBm OOB-IIP3 with 42–47 mW of power consumption per channel.