NOISE CONSIDERATIONS FOR MIXED-SIGNAL RF IC TRANSCEIVERS

This paper discusses design trade-offs for mixed-signal radio frequenc y integrated circuit (RF IC) transceivers for wireless applications in terms of noise, signal power, receiver linearity, and gain. During ai r wave transmission, the signal is corrupted by channel noise, adjacen t interfering users, image signals, and multi-path fading. Furthermore , the receiver corrupts the incoming signal due to RF circuit non-line arity (intermodulation), electronic device noise, and digital switchin g noise. This tutorial paper gives an overview of the design trade-off s needed to minimize RF noise in an integrated wireless transceiver. F undamental device noise and the coupling of switching noise from digit al circuits to sensitive analog sections and their impact on RF circui ts such as frequency synthesizers are examined. Methods to minimize mi xed-signal noise coupling and to model substrate noise effects are pre sented.