A 130-nm CMOS 100-Hz-6-GHz Reconfigurable Vector Signal Analyzer and Software-Defined Receiver

A monolithic 100-Hz-6-GHz reconfigurable vector signal analyzer (VSA) and software-defined receiver (SDR), following a two-step up-down conversion heterodyne scheme with robustness to various wideband interference scenarios and local oscillator (LO) harmonic mixing, is presented. The 130-nm CMOS chip does not require external filters or baseband processing to reduce the effect of interferences or LO harmonics. The receiver has tunable gain from -67 to 68 dB in steps of 0.5 dB, and tunable bandwidth from 0.4 to 11 MHz in steps of 0.5 MHz. The receiver sensitivity at the maximum gain is -82 dBm. A monolithic VSA/SDR enables various commercial and military wireless solutions.