Introduction

The IF bandpass filter acts as a channel filter which has a bandwidth of 180KHz and operates at a center
frequency of 70MHz. For the specification of sensitivity which is 85dBm of our receiver, it requires the
IF bandpass filter to have an equivalent input noise voltage of 30uV and an input IIP3 of 0dBm. For
nowadays receivers, SAW filters are used for their high Q and low noise. For our receiver, a sixth-order
Gm-C biquad filter is used as a substitution. The filter is constructed with a cascade of 3 biquads with one
shown in Fig.1:

Fig.1. Gm-C biquad used as IF bandpass filter for this receiver.

Because the Q of this filter is up to >390, unlike other low-Q filters, the positive conductance G m4 is
omitted. Instead, due to the existence of finite Ro1, Ro2 and Ro3 of each Gm cell, negative conductance
compensation is employed for boosting up the output impedance.

For this filter, linearized Gm cells using unbalanced differential pairs are employed which will be discussed
in section II. A noise analysis of a Gm-C biquad will be delivered in section III. Further improvement of
the linearity by strategic distribution of gain of each stage is discussed in section IV.

II. The Gm Cell of the gyrator and the input Gm cell

a. Non-linearity of a differential pair.

The non-linearity of a simple differential pair comes from the

square law between the drain current Id and the gate voltage.
Although connected as a differential pair will cancel out the second
order harmonics, there is a variation equal to (Vid2/4)uCoxW/L of
Vgs-Vt of both transistors that cause the variation of the gm and thus
the distortion of signals. There are many techniques of
linearization. [1][2][3] For this filter, the input Gm cell Gm1 employs
cross-coupling technique of linearization while the Gm cells of the
gyrator Gm2 and Gm3 use the unbalanced configuration.

Fig.2 A simple differential pair.

A. Cross-coupling

By doing Maclaurin expansion, Io of a differential pair can be

re-expressed as:

Io = (2IssK)1/2Vid K(K/8Iss)1/2Vid3 + ... (1)

For small distortion, we only care the 3rd order term. If we

connect another differential pair such that they have the same

Iss1 Iss2
Fig.3. The cross-coupled pair.
 3rd order term, then a large amount of distortion can be cancelled out.

From Fig.3, Iss1 = 2Iss2. In order to cancel the 3rd order term, the following relation is satisfied:

(K3,4/K1,2)3/2 = (Iss2/Iss1)1/2 (2)

Obtaining K1,2 = 1.26K3,4 .

The cross-coupled pair has the advantage of simple and effective linearity improvement. But as there is an
extra differential pair connected at the output, the noise performance degrades. Moreover, the effective gm
is the difference of the gm s of the 2 pairs. So it is not suitable for applications where the power efficiency
is critical. But it is suitable for where very small gm is required. So it is used as the Gm1, the input Gm cell,
of this filter.

III. Noise analysis of a biquad.

Let the input noise = Vn2In , the total output noise = Vn2out and
the noise of Filter H(S) = Vn2H(S), The bandwidth interested is
180KHz. We approximate H(S) to be a brick-wall filter with
in-band gain = gain at 70MHz as shown in Fig.4.Then the
total output noise

Vn2out = H(S)Vn2In + Vn2H(S) ≈ G70MHzVn2In + Vn2H(S) (8)

Noise Figure N.F. = SNRin/SNRout

= 10 log (Vn2out/ G70MHzVn2In) (9)

Fig 3. The unbalanced differential pair.

IV. Noise calculation of the gyrator

The gyrator is a negative feedback loop of 2 Gm cells. A detailed

calculation has to be carried out to understand the noise dependence
on the gm and the Q of the gyrator.

In the calculation, the Rout, Cout and gm refer to the differential ones.
Thus, for each branch of the differential pair, the output loading is
Rout/2 and the gm is twice as the gm of the differential cell.
Fig.5. Approximate transfer function of the filter. V2 = -(Gm2Vo+In2)[Ro2/(1+sRo2C2)] (10)

Iin1 = -Gm3V2 + In3

= (Gm3Gm2Vo+Gm3In2) [Ro2/(1+sRo2C2)] + In3 (11)

Iin2 = Vo(1+sRo3C3)/Ro3 (12)

Fig.6. The noise sources of a gyrator.

Iin = Iin1 + Iin2 = [Gm2Gm3Ro2/(1+sRo2C2)]+[(1+sRo3C3)/Ro3]Vo + Gm3In2Ro2/(1+sRo2C2) + In3 (13)

The total output current consists of the input signal current Iin and the noise currents In3 and
In2Gm3Ro2/(1+sRo2C2). The output voltage is just the output current times the impedance function of the
gyrator:

Vo ≈ (Iin - In2Gm3Ro2/(1+sRo2C2) - In3){s/C1[s2+s(Ro2-1C2-1+Ro3-1C3-1)+Gm2Gm3/ C1 C2]}

= (Iin-Gm3Ro2In2/(1+sRo2C2)-In3)HR(S) (14)

Again, for simple calculation, we approximate the impedance function equal to R out at 70MHz. Where Rout
is given by:

Rout = 2Q / gm (15)

The noise current of each gm cell is given by :

In2 = [8kTB(2gm)(Rout/2)2]/3 (16)

As a result, the output noise power of a gm cell is:

V2out = 16kTQ2B/(3gm) (17)

Reference
1. Analogue IC design.1. Integrated circuits, Design & construction, Toumazou , Lidey,
F. J. and Haigh D. , Short Run Press Ltd.