Design of receiver front-end for WLAN and 5G standards above 5 GHz

Abstract

Since its first release, Wi-Fi has become ubiquitous all around the world. Targeting at a faster speed, and broader and denser coverage, Wi-Fi standards have never stopped evolving. It has two main frequency bands for all these Wi-Fi protocols: 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz. 5 GHz frequency band is getting more and more interest due to its larger available bandwidth. Meanwhile, with the advent of 5G and 6G, it is expected to exploit more sub-6 GHz frequency bands and utilize higher frequency bands to acquire larger bandwidth. This thesis devotes itself to develop techniques to implement high-performance receiver front-end suitable for applications above 5 GHz, like 802.11ac, 802.11ax, 5G, and 6G. Firstly, two LNAs integrated with Miller N-path filter working above 5 GHz are proposed, which self-correct the frequency offset. Secondly, an LNA-first receiver is proposed, which supports aggregation of two carriers and is applicable for 802.11ac and 802.11ax communication standards. Thirdly, to overcome the trade-off between limited bandwidth and noise performance in the conventional low noise transconductance amplifier (LNTA)-based single-path receiver, a hybrid CS/CS receiver architecture with only one on-chip inductor is proposed. Lastly, to further reduce the power consumption, a single LNTA-path-based receiver is proposed which requires no auxiliary path.