A 1.2 mW RDS receiver for portable applications

A 0.9 V 1.2 mA fully integrated radio data system (RDS) receiver for the 88-108 MHz FM broadcasting band is presented. Requiring only a few external components (matching network, VCO inductors, loop filter components), the receiver, which has been integrated in a standard digital 0.18 μm CMOS technology, achieves a noise figure of 5 dB and a sensitivity of -86dBm. The circuit can be configured and the RDS data retrieved via an I²C interface so that it can very simply be used as a peripheral in any portable application. A 250 kHz low-IF architecture has been devised to minimize the power dissipation of the baseband filters and FM demodulator. The frequency synthesizer consumes 250 μA, the RF front-end 450 μA while providing 40 dB of gain, the baseband filter and limiters 100 μA, and the FM and BPSK analog demodulators 300 μA. The chip area is 3.6 mm².