A Low-Power High Gain and High Linearity CMOS RF Front-End Design Involving a Charge Injection Mixer for V2X Technology

In this paper, an RF front-end (RFFE) circuit consisting of a low noise amplifier (LNA) and a down-conversion mixer for vehicle-to-everything (V2X) applications in a 65-nm CMOS process is presented. V2X standard has a carrier frequency of 5.9GHz with 10 and 20MHz bandwidth options. The LNA topology of the RFFE is based on an inductively degenerated cascode common source differential approach. The mixer design uses a double-balanced topology with a charge injection method to enhance the linearity and noise figure performance. The RFFE design shows a single sideband integrated noise figure of 4.47dB with a total conversion gain of 28dB. The IIP3 is obtained as -17dBm with charge injection in the mixer which is an improvement of 5dB as compared to no charge injection. The design consumes a total current of 10.24mA from a 1.2-V supply. This work is the first CMOS RFFE design implemented for V2X applications.