A 0.18 μm CMOS low-noise elliptic low-pass continuous-time filter

This paper presents a seventh order low-pass continuous-time elliptic filter for use in a high-performance wireline communication receiver. As an additional attribute, the filter provides programmable boost in the pass-band to counteract high frequency component attenuation. The filter shows a nominal cutoff frequency of f_c=34 MHz, less than 1 dB ripple in the pass-band, and a maximum stop-band rejection of 65 dB. The filter also exhibits low noise feature (peak root spectral noise density below 56 nV/√Hz) and high linearity (more than 64 dB of MTPR for a DMT signal of 0.5 V_pp amplitude). It has been designed in a 0.18 μm CMOS technology and it is compliant with industrial operation conditions (-40 to 85°C temperature variation and ±5% power supply deviation). Simulations show a typical power consumption of 450 mW @ 1.8 V supply.