A highly-integrated inductor-less SiGe W-CDMA transmitter

A highly-integrated W-CDMA transmitter, which consists of an IQ modulator, an intermediate frequency variable gain amplifier, an up-conversion mixer and a radio frequency variable gain amplifier is presented. All functional blocks in the transmitter are inductor-less, significantly reducing the size of the chip of the transmitter. The measured gain control range exceeded 80 dB and the gain control resolution is 1 dB, meeting the requirements of the W-CDMA system. The measured maximum output power is -2.5 dBm. As the output power varies from -82.5 dBm to 2.5 dBm, the current consumption of the transmitter IC varies from 44 mA to 88 mA. The measured error vector magnitude (EVM) is 1.86% at maximum output power.