A broadband RF 65 nm CMOS front-end for cable TV reception

A novel broadband RF front-end in 65 nm CMOS technology is presented. The front-end serves to precondition the incoming RF spectrum for further processing in a cable TV receiver architecture where RF channel selection and down conversion are done in digital domain. The analog front-end consists of a broadband highly linear low-noise amplifier followed by a variable gain RF amplifier. An original broadband circuit topology for the amplifiers is adopted.The fabricated front-end exhibits a bandwidth of 50–1050 MHz, a variable gain, which spans from 12 to 37 dB with a 0.2 dB step, an OIP3 of 28.4 dBm (77.5 dBmV), an OIP2 of 65 dBm (114 dBmV), and a noise figure of 5.8 dB, dissipating 125 mW at 1.2 V supply, and a core silicon area of 0.4 mm2.