Broadband Quadrature Mixers with Integrated I/Q Mismatch Calibration

Communication SoC technology has advanced significantly over the past ten years resulting in highly integrated radio SoC chips for standards such as wireless Wi-Fi[xx], global position system (GPS), Bluetooth (BT), 3G cellular, digital TV (DTV), and cable modems. While most radio SoC’s are narrowband (e.g. WiFi, GPS, BT, and cellular), future trends favor broadband software defined radios (SDR) and cognitive radios (CR). Both of these advanced radio concepts as well as some existing systems, such as DTV and cable tuners, require broadband quadrature mixers for up/down conversion with high linearity, low noise, high isolation, and superb I/Q matching. I/Q imbalance is especially detrimental to radio SoC’s that must support high order modulation and tight channel spacing, typical in current and emerging radio systems. The proposed project will develop and demonstrate the feasibility of a broadband quadrature mixer that can achieve 54dB of image rejection ratio over a 3GHz bandwidth using robust integrated on-chip I/Q calibration in SOS process.