An alternative design flow for receiver performance optimization through a trade-off between RF and ADC

The lack of a systematic design strategy that can monitor the relation between RF blocks and ADC is one of the main obstacles for achieving overall system optimization. This paper presents an alternative design flow based on the translation of ADC parameters into the RF domain. This design flow indicates four variables that can be used for the trade-off between RF and ADC blocks. Associating these key variables to power consumption enables the trade-off between the block performance and system power consumption. The demonstrated capability of this method is illustrated by comparing two scenarios, related to the IEEE 802.11a standard.