3(b).

A specic testing code is written, letting the micro-SD

card keep radiating 10-dBm On-Off Keying (OOK) modulated
random data at a centre frequency of 2.48 GHz with a band-
width of 160 kHz.
During the measurement, the mobile phone is placed on a
turn table automatically driven by a computer. Another 2.4-GHz
patch antenna is placed 12 cm away from the micro-SD card,
serving as the receiving antenna. The received average power in
E and H plane are recorded at every 5

with the rotation of the

turn table, and the radiation pattern is shown in Figure 4. The
maximum received power is 59 dBm, which is much higher
than the averaged sensitivity of ordinary RF receivers ranging
from 90 to 100 dBm. The half power beam width is about
90

in the H plane and 60

in the E plane, respectively, which

also perfectly ts the MP usage.
To make sure the micro-SD card works in the full distance
range, the receiving power versus the distance r between the
receiving antenna and the micro-SD card is also measured, and
the result is shown in Figure 5. Notice that in this measurement,
the angle is xed at the 0

in H plane. We see that with the dis-

tance r varying from 5 to 20 cm, the received power keeps
higher than 70 dBm. As aforementioned, to ensure the work-
ing distance to be limited in specic range, the transmitting
power of CC2500 can be tuned by its built-in power control
mechanism.
5. CONCLUSIONS
In short, exampled by a physical realization of an MP subsys-
tem, we proposed a design and testing approach for the imple-
mentation of micro-sized differential antennas for 2.4-GHz FFC
MP applications. A micro-sized 3 11 mm
2
-sized differential
antenna driven by a commercial 2.4-GHz transceiver is properly
designed and test, and successfully packaged into a 15 11
mm
2
-sized micro-SD card. The experimental measurements of
the SD card show that the micro-sized antenna works and ts
well with the MP application requirement. This work provides a
valuable reference for the RF subsystem design of an FFC MP
system.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work is sponsored by China Potevio Co. Ltd, and in part by
NSFC (Nos. 61071063 and 60701007), 863 Project (No.
2009AA01Z227) and NCET-07-0750.
REFERENCES
1. S. Karnouskos, Mobile payment: A journey through existing proce-
dures and standardization initiatives, IEEE Commun Surveys Tuts
6 (2004), 4446.
2. D. Zhou, R.A. Abd-Alhameed, and P.S. Excell, Wideband balanced
folded dipole antenna for mobile handsets, 2nd European Confer-
ence on Antennas and Propagation, 2007, pp.15.
3. S. Cheng, P. Hallbjorner, A. Rydberg, D. Vanotterdijk, and P. van
Engen, T-matched dipole antenna integrated in electrically small
body-worn wireless sensor node, Microwaves Antennas Propag 5
(2009), 774781.
4. X.Z. Qing, C.K. Goh, and Z.N. Chen, Impedance characterization
of RFID tag antennas and application in tag co-design, IEEE Trans
Microwave Theory Tech 5 (2009), 12681274.
5. R. Bourtoutian, C. Delaveaud, and S. Toutain, Differential shorted
dipole antenna for European UWB applications, 2nd European
Conference on Antennas and Propagation, 2007, pp.1116.
6. K.D. Palmer and M.W.V. Rooyen, Simple broadband measure-
ments of balanced loads using a network analyzer, Instrum Meas 2
(2006), 266272.
VC
2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
CHIP DESIGN OF AN UWB AND HIGH
GAIN ON-CHIP TRANSFORMER
RECEIVER FRONT-END
Jhin-Fang Huang,
1
Pei-Jiuan Shie,
1
and Ron-Yi Liu
2
1
Department of Electronic Engineering, National Taiwan University
of Science and Technology, 43, Kee-lung Rd. Sec. 4, Taipei
10672, Taiwan; Corresponding author: jfhuang@mail.ntust.edu.tw
2
Chung-Hwa Tele-communication Lab, Taiwan
Received 9 September 2010
ABSTRACT: An ultra-wideband receiver front-end operating in 3.18.0
GHz frequency range is presented. The proposed front-end consists of
on-chip transformer low-noise amplier, passive balun, double-balanced
mixer, and is fabricated in a TSMC 0.18 lm CMOS process with 1.8 V
supply voltage. Measured results show that maximum conversion gain of
30.32 dB, noise gure less than 5.9 dB, input return loss (S
11
) smaller
than 15.3 dB, input-referred third-order intercept point of 21.4 dBm,
1 dB compression point (P
1 dB
) of 30 dBm over the whole frequency
range of interest are achieved. In addition, isolations of LO to RF and
LO to IF are less than 57 dB and 27.8 dB, respectively, chip area
including pads is only 0.985 mm
2
and power dissipation is 36.88 mW.
The realized front-end achieves the smallest chip area and the best
merit of gure compared with previously reported front-ends. VC
2011
Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 53:14221427,
2011; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com. DOI 10.1002/
mop.25956
Key words: front-end; UWB; ultra-wideband; LNA; low-noise
amplifier; double-balanced mixer
1. INTRODUCTION
In an ultra-wideband (UWB) communication receiver system,
less chip area for low cost is a key design goal for the front-
end. Recently, several UWB receiver front-ends have been
reported [19]. The UWB distributed RF front-end [2], which is
suitable for IF transceiver architectures, achieves wideband con-
version gain (CG), and good linearity. Nevertheless, it suffers
several disadvantages including large chip area and process vari-
eties. In the literature [7], the inductorless RF front-end achieved
less chip area and low noise gure (NF). However, its CG is not
good enough. Using the direct conversion architecture, the
receiver front-end chip integrates a single-ended output
Figure 5 The power distribution at different distance between the con-
troller antenna and the micro SD card
1422 MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 53, No. 6, June 2011 DOI 10.1002/mop
wideband low-noise amplier (LNA) and single-ended input
mixer [36]. They need no extra balun, but they suffer large
chip area, and higher power consumption.
The proposed LNA in this receiver front-end utilizes the
inverting stage with transformer feedback and a cascode circuit
with shunt peaking to lift the gain and achieve a wideband input
integrated matching to the antenna impedance as well as provide
a high and at power gain.
Following the LNA, a CMOS Gilbert-cell double-balanced
circuit is used to mix down the wideband signal. According to
Friss equation [3], the MOS device size of the rst stage can
reduce NF. Hence, to achieve impedance matching, noise reduc-
tion, and low-power dissipation at the same time, we select
appropriate device sizes by simulator ADS to optimize the per-
formance. The output load of the Gilbert-cell mixer composes
of cascode PMOS devices and mid-taped differential load resis-
tor, which uses a common mode feedback structure, takes the
advantage of excellent current reuse, and provides a well-dened
common mode voltage.
2. RECEIVER FRONT-END ARCHITECTURE
The dashed block, in Figure 1, is the proposed receiver front-
end integrating a wideband LNA, passive balun and Gilbert
mixer. The direct conversion is adopted to achieve low cost
design.
3. CIRCUIT DESIGN
3.1. LNA Design and Its Noise Analysis
The LNA adopts a single-ended output conguration. The dou-
ble-balanced mixer uses a differential input conguration.
Clearly, the single-ended LNA needs differential output to ena-
ble a double-balanced input mixer. A passive balun is then
designed to meet this requirement.
Figure 2 shows the proposed on-chip transformer LNA which
consists of inverting technique with the splitting-load inductive
peaking technique for achieving high gain, low NF, and wide-
band input matching. The rst stage of LNA is embedded with
a symmetric planar transformer for circuit feedback. The trans-
former layout is embedded in the gates of both M
N
and M
P
and
provides feedbacks to the drains of both M
N
and M
P
as shown
in Figure 2. The layout of the 1.2:1 transformer consists of pri-
mary and secondary windings as shown in Figure 3(a). The
diameters of outer and inner rings of the transformer are equal
to 120 lm and 60 lm and the metal width and spacing of the
transformer are 6 lm and 2 lm, respectively. The chip area of
transformer is 120 154 lm
2
. Figure 3(b) shows the model of
on-chip transformer. The feedback resistor, R
f
, in Figure 2 is
properly adjusted to get better values of gain, NF, and input
impedance.
According to Friis equation [3], total NF is dominated by the
noise of the LNA rst stage if its gain is high enough. From the
small signal noise equivalent circuit of the LNA rst stage
shown in Figure 4 and the input- referred equivalent resistor R
F
R
f
/(1 A
V
), the total noise is the summation of all noise
components and is dominated by two voltage sources: V
n;Rs
and
V
n;RF
and two current sources: i
ng


4kTcg
m
p
and i
2
nd
, where c
2/3 is the noise coefcient. The output NF of the LNA rst
stage is dened as:
NF
signal to noise power at input
signal to noise power at output
S
i
=N
i
S
o
=N
o

i
2
out;total
i
2
out;Rs
: (1)
From Kirchhoff law and the principle of superposition, the
output NF is, therefore, equal to the summation of the noise
sources: i
2
out;Rs
, i
2
out;RF
, and i
2
out;indg
,
Or NF 1
i
2
out;RF
i
2
out;Rs

i
2
out;indg
i
2
out;Rs
; (2)
Figure 1 Block diagram of the direct conversion front-end
Figure 2 The proposed LNA circuit with a coupling output balun
Figure 3 Monolithic transformer: (a) physical layout and (b)
schematic
Figure 4 Small signal equivalent circuit of the LNA rst stage shown
in Figure 2 for noise analysis
DOI 10.1002/mop MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 53, No. 6, June 2011 1423
where i
2
out;Rs
and i
2
out;RF
are the output noises corresponding to R
s
and R
F
, respectively. In addition, i
2
out;indg
is the summation of i
2
nd
and the output noise from i
2
ng
where i
2
nd
and i
2
ng
are the MOS
drain and gate noises, respectively.
After some mathematical procedures, the output NF of the
LNA rst stage is expressed as:
NF 1
R
s
R
F
cg
d0
R
s
d x
2
C
2
gs
5cg
2
d0
2jcj

d
5c

x
2
C
gs
q
g
d0
v
_

1 x
2
L
P
C
gsn
1 k
2

1
Rs

1
RF

2
x
2
q
2
v
2
_ (3)
where g
d0
is the drain-source conductance at zero V
DS
and
R
F

Rf
1Av
,
nS
nP

VS
VP

IP
IS

LS
LP
_
1, c
i

nd
ing

i
2
nd
i
2
ng
_ ,
v g
mp
g
mn
x
2
g
mp
L
P
C
gsn
1 k, C
gs
C
gsp
C
gsn
, as
well as q C
gsp
1 x
2
L
P
C
gsn
1 k C
gsn
.
The detailed derivation procedures are given in Appendix.
Both of the numerical calculation NF of (3) and the post-
simulation NF are shown in Figure 5. They are in pretty good
agreement. The calculated NF from (3) is better than the postsi-
mulation NF as it omits the parasitic capacitances between
NMOS and PMOS transistor terminals. Obviously, a higher R
f
yields a better NF. A larger R
f
can efciently suppress the am-
plier noise.
3.2. Balun
In RF integrated circuits, passive balun converts the LNA sin-
gle-ended output to the mixer differential input shown in Figure
6. The balun is a trilar coil. The negative end of secondary
winding and the positive end of third one are connected together
as a common ground. That can eliminate the unbalance due to
potential difference, improve the phase error and obtain a differ-
ential output. The designed balun with outer diameter of 174
lm, inner diameter of 80 lm, metal width of 5 lm, and spacing
of 2 lm found in [2] has the merits of compact size, symmetri-
cal physical layout for balance amplitude and small phase error.
Its chip area is only 270 174 lm
2
.
3.3. Mixer
Figure 7 shows the proposed double-balanced Gilbert-cell mixer
which comprises input transconductance stage, switch, output
load, and output buffer. The current bleeding transistors, M
1
and
M
2
, are used to reduce the required local oscillator (LO) over-
drive to completely switch the quad devices.
The LO signal input stages, M
3
, M
4
, M
5
, and M
6
effectively
lift CG and enhance linearity. This also improves the voltage
headroom for the quad switches. The balun outputs are coupled
to the mixer input transistor gates of M
7
and M
8
, whose source
terminals are directly connected to ground to produce lower
third-order nonlinearity than connected to a current source.
4. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The proposed receiver front-end is fabricated in TSMC 0.18-lm
CMOS process. The simulation results are carried out with sim-
ulators of ADS and Spectre RF. In addition, performances of
circuits are also simulated after layout and parasitic extraction
by ADS and Momentum RF. The die micrograph is shown in
Figure 8 Chip micrograph of the proposed receiver front-end
Figure 5 NF versus feedback resistor R
f
Figure 6 A passive coupling balun: (a) physical layout; (b) schematic
Figure 7 The proposed Gilbert-cell mixer circuit
1424 MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 53, No. 6, June 2011 DOI 10.1002/mop
Figure 8 and the chip area including pads only occupies 1.098
0.897 0.985 mm
2
.
Figure 9 shows the circuit return loss in which the input and
output return losses are less than 15.3 dB and 13.3 dB,
respectively, over the entire frequency of 3.18 GHz. Figure 10
shows that the CG is greater than 26.53 dB and the DSB NF is
less than 5.7 dB, respectively, at IF frequency band from 0.01 to
0.264 GHz. Figure 11 shows both of CG and output power ver-
sus input power at the input signal frequency of 5.1 GHz. Note
that lower input power has higher CG. Figure 12 indicates the
measured 1 dB compression point (P
1 dB
). The measured input
Figure 9 Return loss versus frequency
Figure 10 CG and DSB NF at IF frequency range
Figure 11 CG and output power versus input power at input fre-
quency of 5.1 GHz
Figure 12 Measurement of P
1 dB
at input frequency of 5.1 GHz.
[Color gure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at
wileyonlinelibrary.com]
Figure 13 Isolations of LO to RF and LO to IF
Figure 14 Comparison of CG versus FOM
DOI 10.1002/mop MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 53, No. 6, June 2011 1425
P
1 dB
is 30 dBm. Figure 13 shows both simulation and mea-
surement of circuit isolations. The isolation of LO to RF is less
than 57 dB and the isolation of LO to IF is less than 27.8
dB, respectively, over the whole frequency of interest.
The performance of the proposed receiver front-end is sum-
marized with in-band merit of gure (FOM) as follows [8]:
FOM
receiver

Gain
max;dB
BW
3dB;GHz
NF
min;dB
P
DCmW
A
mm
2

: (4)
Figure 14 shows the comparison of CG versus FOM to other
recently published papers. It clearly shows that our results yield
the highest CG and best FOM comparing with other literatures.
The performance comparison of the proposed on-chip trans-
former UWB receiver front-end is summarized in Table 1. Obvi-
ously, our design obtains the best FOM with the lowest chip
area, the highest CG and the best input return loss (S
11
) as
attaining comparable performances in NF and linearity.
5. CONCLUSIONS
An UWB receiver front-end operating in 3.18.0 GHz frequency
range has been successfully implemented in a standard 0.18 lm
CMOS process. This front-end uses a passive on-chip balun to
convert the single-ended output to differential input of mixer. In
addition, this front-end adopting on-chip transformer LNA with
splitting-load inductive peaking technique and feedback method
achieves highest CG, best FOM and input matching, smaller
chip area and comparable consuming power compared with
recently published front-end papers. Table 1 shows the compari-
son among several receiver front ends.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors thank the staff of the CIC for the chip fabrication and
technical supports.
APPENDIX: DERIVATION OF LNA NOISE FIGURE
In this design, the noise in the rst stage of LNA dominates the
NF value and only this stage is discussed thereby. From the
noise small signal equivalent circuit of the rst stage of LNA
shown in Figure 4 and the input-referred equivalent resistor R
F
R
f
/(1 A
V
), the total noise comes from all of the frequency
components of the LNA noise. The noise of the LNA rst stage
by two voltage sources: V
n;Rs
and V
n;RF
and one current source,
i
ng


4kTcg
m
p
, where c 2/3 is the noise coefcient. The out-
put noise per unit bandwidth is, therefore, equal to the summa-
tion of each noise. From Kirchhoff law and the principle of
superposition, i
2
out;Rs
, i
2
out;RF
, and i
2
out;indg
can be expressed as:
TABLE 1 Previously Published Receiver Front-End Paper Comparison
Reference V
dd
(V) S
11
(dB) CG
max
(dB) BW (GHz) P
dc
(mW) DSB NF (dB) Area (mm
2
) Process (lm) FOM
[1] 1.5 <0 26.4 3.110.6 48 4.87.7 2.4 CMOS 0.13 0.358
[3] 1.5 <10 22.3 3.110.6 46.5 5.79.6 1 CMOS 0.13 0.631
[4] 1.5 <5 23.3 3.110.6 42 5.29.1 2.4 CMOS 0.13 0.333
[5] 1.5 <10 21.5 3.18 31.89 4.36.2 1.16 TSMC 0.18 0.662
[6]
a
1.5 <8.27 23.5 35 21
a
4.2 1.8 CMOS 0.13 0.296
This work 1.8 <15.3 30.32 3.18 36.88 4.85.9 0.985 TSMC 0.18 0.855
a
Without output buffers.
i
out;Rs

4jTDf g
mn
G
mp
x
2
L
P
C
gsn
g
mp
1 k
2
R
s
1 x
2
L
P
C
gsn
1 k
2 1
Rs

1
RF
_ _
2
x
2
C
gsp
1 x
2
L
P
C
gsn
1 k C
gsn

2
_ _ (A1)
i
out;RF

4jTDf g
mn
G
mp
x
2
L
P
C
gsn
g
mp
1 k
2
R
F
1 x
2
L
P
C
gsn
1 k
2 1
Rs

1
RF
_ _
2
x
2
C
gsp
1 x
2
L
P
C
gsn
1 k C
gsn

2
_ _ (A2)
i
2
out;indg
4 j T Df cg
d0
1 2jcj

d
5c

x
2
C
gs
C
gs
x
2
L
P
C
gsp
C
gsn
1 kg
mp
g
mn
x
2
g
mp
L
P
C
gsn
1 k
g
d0
1 x
2
L
P
C
gsn
1 k
2 1
Rs

1
RF
_ _
x
2
C
gsp
1 x
2
L
P
C
gsn
1 k C
gsn

2
_
_
_

d x
2
C
2
gs
5c g
2
d0
g
mp
g
mn
x
2
g
mp
L
P
C
gsn
1 k
2
1 x
2
L
P
C
gsn
1 k
2 1
Rs

1
RF
_ _
x
2
C
gsp
1 x
2
L
P
C
gsn
1 k C
gsn

2
_
_
_
A3
Substituting (A1)(A3) into (1), yields the following noise factor:
NF 1
R
s
R
F
c g
d0
R
s
d x
2
C
2
gs
5 c g
2
d0
2jcj

d
5c

x
2
C
gs
q
g
d0
v

1 x
2
L
P
C
gsn
1 k
2 1
Rs

1
RF
_ _
2
x
2
q
2
v
2
_

_
_

_
(A4)
1426 MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 53, No. 6, June 2011 DOI 10.1002/mop
REFERENCES
1. Multi-band OFDM physical layer proposal, In: IEEE, 802.15-03/
268r5, New York, NY, November, 2003.
2. G.G. Rabjohn, Monolithic microwave transformers, M.Eng. Thesis,
Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, 1991.
3. T.-P. Liu and E. Westerwick, 5-GHz CMOS radio transceiver
front-end chipset, IEEE J Solid-State Circ 35 (2000).
4. B. Shi and M.Y.W. Chia, A CMOS receiver front-end for 3.1-10.6
GHz ultra-wideband radio, In: Proceedings of the 3rd European
Radar Conference, September, 2006.
5. B. Shi and M.Y.W. Chia, A 3-10-GHz 0.13-lm CMOS receiver
front-end for MB-OFDM ultra-wideband systems, In: IEEE, 2007.
6. R. Harjani and L. Cai, Inductorless design of wireless CMOS
front-ends, In: IEEE, New York, NY, 2007.
7. B. Shi and M.Y.W. Chia, An ultra-wideband CMOS receiver front-
end, In: Proceedings of the 3rd European Radar Conference, 2007.
8. M.-C. Hsu, RF CMOS front-end chip design for ultra-wideband
applications, Master Thesis, Department of Electronic Engineering,
National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei,
Taiwan, 2008.
9. Y.-A Shim, J. Lee, S.K. Han, and S.G. Lee, Low noise RF front-
end receiver for 3-5 GHz UWB, In: ICACT, February, 2008.
VC
2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
NOVEL BAND-NOTCHED ULTRA-
WIDEBAND ELLIPTICAL MONOPOLE
ANTENNA WITH DUAL RADIATING
ELEMENTS
Bo-Ming Jeng and Ching-Hsing Luo
Department of Electrical Engineering, National Cheng Kung
University, Tainan 701, Taiwan; Corresponding author:
robin@ee.ncku.edu.tw
Received 16 August 2010
ABSTRACT: A novel ultra-wideband design of planar elliptical
monopole antenna with dual radiating elements is presented. The
proposed antenna consists of two elliptical radiating elements and a
ground plane. The antenna has a super-wideband from 2.8 to 15 GHz
for voltage standing wave ratio less than 2, except the notched band at
4.85.9 GHz for ltering the wireless local area network signal. Based
on the contribution of the shorting position d to the notch bandwidth, a
particular notch-band range can be designed by adjusting the size of the
minor elliptical radiating element. The radiation pattern of the proposed
antenna in the yz-plane is omni-directional. VC
2011 Wiley Periodicals,
Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 53:14271430, 2011; View this article
online at wileyonlinelibrary.com. DOI 10.1002/mop.26023
Key words: ultra-wideband antenna; band-notched; monopole antenna;
dual radiating elements
1. INTRODUCTION
Ultra-wideband (UWB, 3.110.6 GHz) antennas have attracted
attention for their use in high-speed wireless communication
systems in recent years. Several researches of UWB antennas
with various shapes have been presented [1, 2]. However, wire-
less local area network (WLAN) systems suffer from interfer-
ence form UWB signals, and so UWB antennas must not use a
frequency band that overlaps the WLAN operating band (5.15
5.825 GHz). Many UWB antenna designs with a band-stop char-
acteristic have been presented. They include one that uses an
inverted U-shape slot in the patch [3], and one that is obtained by
cutting a pie-shaped slot in a circular patch [4]. This letter
presents a novel design of an antenna with a UWB operating
bandwidth and a band-notched frequency band at 5 GHz. This
proposed UWB planar monopole antenna is nonresponsive in the
frequency band. Frequency band-notched is easily achieved by
adjusting the size of the minor elliptical radiating element; de-
structive interference can take place, causing the antenna to be
nonresponsive at that frequency. Details of the proposed antenna,
and results obtained using a constructed prototype are presented.
2. ANTENNA DESIGN AND EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
Figure 1 shows the geometry of the proposed antenna. The
major elliptical radiating element is etched on a 0.8 mm-thick
FR4 microwave substrate with a relative permittivity of 4.4. A
50X microstrip-fed line is printed on the same side. The back-
side of the substrate has a minor elliptical radiating element and
a ground plane. The area of the ground on the backside is 10.9
30 mm
2
; it has a concave slot with dimensions 5 0.75
Figure 1 Geometry of the proposed antenna
DOI 10.1002/mop MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 53, No. 6, June 2011 1427