A UHF CMOS Transceiver Front-end with a Resonant TR Switch

A fully-integrated UHF CMOS transceiver with resonant transmit/receive (T/R) switch is reported. The transceiver´s power amplifier (PA) and LNA are simultaneously connected to the antenna and isolated from each other by going to high impedances during receive and transmit respectively. A two-stage single-ended PA produces 19 dBm output power and 36% PAE is measured at 400 MHz. The LNA has 22 dB gain and 3.4 dB noise figure. In transmit mode, the LNA input impedance becomes 1 kOmega, which absorbs only 0.2 dB of the transmitter output power. The PA side provides 300 Omega toward antenna at receive mode in order not to corrupt noise performance. The transceiver power can be increased through an optional second chip that uses the same TR switch techniques. The optional PA produces 29 dBm power at 29% PAE. The transceiver was implemented as part of a Mars Micro-transceiver development project for future scout missions