A 50–68-GHz IF Absorptive Receiver Supporting Multichannel Carrier Aggregation for 5G NR FR2-2 and SATCOM

This article presents a 50–68-GHz IF absorptive receiver. The intermodulation (IM) interference caused by the IF signal reflection to the mixer is mitigated through an absorptive IF amplifier, enabling a wideband and flattened IF bandwidth. Moreover, the IF amplifier is implemented in a distortion-canceling structure to improve the linearity of the receiver. The wideband optimal noise performance and input matching of the LNA are achieved using a compact configured-coupled transformer (CCT). I/Q generation is achieved in the LO buffer chain based on a wideband transformer-based quadrature coupler. Verified in a conventional 40-nm bulk CMOS technology, the proposed receiver demonstrates a 26.2-dB conversion gain (CG) and a gain tuning range of 13dB with an 8-GHz IF bandwidth. The measurement results show a 5.6–10-dB NF and a$- 35{-} to $-24-dBm IP1dBat the high-gain mode of 26.2dB. Full-band I/Q calibration-free operation is achieved with an image rejection ratio (IRR) ranging from 28 to 60.5dB. Benefiting from the IF absorption technique, the proposed RX supports 4-Gb/s 256-QAM modulation, 9.6-Gb/s 64-QAM 16-channel, and 12-Gb/s 64-QAM 8-channel carrier aggregation (CA), which is attractive for 5G NR FR2-2 and SATCOM applications.