An 8–18GHz 0.18W wideband recursive receiver MMIC with gain-reuse

This paper presents an 8-18 GHz wideband receiver with superheterodyne topology. In order to save power, both RF and IF signals share the tunable transconductance stage. The IF output of the first mixer is fed to its tunable input stage for IF amplification in a recursive manner, which significantly enhances the gain tuning without increasing the power. The wideband receiver MMIC is implemented in a 0.13 mum SiGe BiCMOS technology and achieves 6.7-7.8 dB noise figure (NF). The average voltage gain of the receiver is measured as 53 dB maximum with 20 dB continual tuning and 36 dB discrete tuning. The average output P1dB is measured as -10 dBm at maximum gain. The receiver dissipates 180 mW with 2.2 V power supply. To the authors´ best knowledge, this is the first fully integrated single-chip receiver MMIC with the coverage of the entire X-band and Ku-band realized on a commercial SiGe process.