Direct conversion CMOS RF transceiver design techniques to improve co-existence challenges in multi-comm SoCs

This paper presents RF front end architecture and design techniques to enable co-existence among multiple standards in multi-comm SOC products. The design practices presented in this paper are derived from two generation of products designed in 90nm CMOS process for 802.11abgn Wifi and Bluetooth (BT) application. A novel shared LNA architecture is proposed for Wifi and BT front end along with mixer LO frequency plan selection technique for multi-comm SOC design. On-chip power management design guidelines are presented to address power supply noise coupling issues among multiple supply domains.