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DOI 10.1007/s10470-013-0241-5
Costas Psychalinos
Received: 18 June 2013 / Revised: 4 December 2013 / Accepted: 10 December 2013 / Published online: 24 December 2013
Ó Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013
Abstract A 12th-order low voltage tunable differential [2]. The image frequency signal and the IF desired signals
complex filter for bluetooth and Zigbee applications is are close to each other and therefore the first must be
proposed in this paper. The filter is based on improved removed after the down-conversion and before processing
controllable transconductors operating with the ultra-low of the desired signal. Unfortunately, due to their symmetric
supply voltage of 0.5 V. Simulation results using a triple- response around dc, real filters are unable to remove image
well 0.13 lm CMOS technology verify the filter operation signal. Several techniques, like the Hartley architecture, the
fulfilling all the requirements for the complex filtering Weaver architecture, passive RC polyphase filters, active
stage in bluetooth or Zigbee receivers. The in-band group polyphase filters [3, 4], and the complex RD–ADC archi-
delay variation is 0.79 ls for bluetooth and 0.46 ls for tecture [5] are some potential options for on-chip image
Zigbee. The image rejection ratio is greater than 71 dB and rejection, but complex filters seem to be the most prom-
the achieved in-band spurious free dynamic range is 42 dB. ising solution [6].
Complex filters use the I and Q (quadrature) signals
Keywords CMOS analog integrated circuits Ultra-low which are extracted after the down-conversion of the
voltage filters Gm-C filters Complex filters Bluetooth/ modulated RF signal, by means of an LO which offers two
Zigbee filters phases 0° and 90° of the same frequency xLO [7–9]. The
concept is shown at the block diagram of Fig. 1. The
complex filter rejects the image signal in the frequency of
1 Introduction x = -xIF while applies a selection mask around the fre-
quency x = xIF for the desired signal.
Bluetooth and Zigbee are widely used protocols for short- A 12th-order Butterworth complex filter, easily recon-
range wireless communication between portable devices. figurable, for Bluetooth and Zigbee applications is pro-
In RF receivers several architectures are used, such as high posed in this paper. The Butterworth approximation is
intermediate frequency (IF), low-IF or direct conversion [1, preferred because it has small group delay variation within
2]. Among them, low-IF architecture seems to be the most pass-band and all poles have same angular frequency
suitable in terms of on-chip integration and performance. leading to better matching in cross-coupled OTAs in the
Unfortunately, the high-IF architecture needs an external entire filter [6]. The poles of a Butterworth lowpass filter
filter to satisfy the required high quality factor and the (LPF) with cut-off frequency xc are evenly spaced around
direct conversion architecture suffers from local oscillator the circumference of a half-circle of radius xc centered
(LO) leakage and dc offset. Also, the low-IF architecture is upon the origin of the s-plane. The proposed filter operates
preferable because it needs a relaxed rejection of the image in ultra-low supply voltage, making it ideal for portable
signal which comes from the down-conversion operation devices. Low voltage operation is very important in circuits
used in the portable devices [10] helping to reduce their
size, the power consumption and having extended operat-
R. Arya G. Souliotis (&) S. Vlassis C. Psychalinos
Department of Physics, University of Patras, Patras, Greece ing life time without frequent battery recharging. To this
e-mail: gsoul@physics.upatras.gr direction, some topologies of complex filters based on
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74 Analog Integr Circ Sig Process (2014) 79:73–81
active RC bi-quads [10], current mirrors [11, 12], second threshold voltage. The paper is organized as follows: in
generation current conveyors [13], have been proposed. Section II the concept of the complex filter is presented, in
Other topologies use quadrature receivers with gm-C filters Section III the employed low voltage OTA is described in
[14], gyrator lowpass filters [15], log domain filters [16], details and in Section IV the analysis of the proposed filter
and current feedback operational amplifiers [17]. and the simulated results are given. Also, a performance
The proposed filter is based on tunable low-voltage comparison with relative published complex filter topolo-
operational transconductance amplifiers (OTA) [18], it has gies is performed.
no resistors and the center frequency and bandwidth are
orthogonally tunable. Although a gm-C filter based on that
transconductor has been presented in [19], the differential 2 General concept of complex filtering
transconductor used in the proposed realization has been
extensively modified due to the particular requirements for The block diagram of the front-end of a low IF receiver,
the complex filter. The most important is that the complex using a complex filtering is shown in Fig. 1. In this
filters require transconductors with large transconductance receiver, the RF signal is mixed with the quadrature signal
range which must cover all the time-constants variations of of LO, in order to produce a complex signal. Complex
the filter stages. Also, a double-input differential trans- bandpass filter acting as a frequency shifted version of a
conductor is required to realize a signal summation. This LPF, passes the desired signal at x = xIF, and attenuates
filter meets the requirements for a complex filtering stage the image at x = -xIF.
in a Bluetooth and Zigbee receiver. The most important The topologies of complex lossy and lossless integra-
benefit is the operation with the extremely low supply tion/summation blocks based on transconductors are shown
voltage (VDD) of 0.5 V, although it is designed with a tri- in Figs. 2 and 3, respectively. The differential configura-
ple-well 0.13 lm CMOS process that offers relatively high tion is preferred for improving the performance in terms of
noise interference rejection.
Considering that xi = (vI1I? - vI1I- ? vI2I? - vI2I–)
? j (vI1Q? - vI1Q–- ? vI2Q? - vI2Q-) and xo = (vOI? -
vOI-) ? j (vOQ? - vOQ-) and after a routine analysis for
the circuit in Fig. 3, it is obtained that,
xo xIF
xOI ¼ xII xO ð1aÞ
s þ xo xo Q
xo xIF
xOQ ¼ x IQ þ xO ð1bÞ
s þ xo xo I
Fig. 1 Front-end stage block diagram of low-IF receiver using a
complex filter where, xo = C/gmo and xIF = xo(gmIF/gmo).
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Analog Integr Circ Sig Process (2014) 79:73–81 75
I1 I + In1+
C
I1 I - In1-
O I+
O+
gmo
I2 I + In2+ O-
O I-
C
I2 I - In2-
In+
In-
O+
O-
ITB
ITB gmIF gmIF
ITA
O+
O-
In+
In-
I1 Q + In1+
C
O Q+
I1 Q - In1- O+
gmo
I2 Q + In2+ O-
O Q-
C
I2 Q - In2-
Tuning currents ITA, ITB and ITC in Figs. 2 and 3 are used VDD
to control the transconductance value of each transcon- Vf.p
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76 Analog Integr Circ Sig Process (2014) 79:73–81
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Analog Integr Circ Sig Process (2014) 79:73–81 77
The signal flow graph for the complex filter designed C5 = 1.7C, C3 = C4 = 1.9C, where C = 180pF for
following the leapfrog technique is shown in Fig. 7. The Bluetooth and C = 90pF for Zigbee. Although the capac-
final 12th-order filter is realized by employing the complex itors C2 and C5 should be identical, they are slightly dif-
lossy and lossless integrators of Figs. 2 and 3, as depicted ferent to compensate internal parasitic capacitances which
in Fig. 8. Each transconductor in the filter, takes a suitable affect the response of the filter. Switching from Zigbee to
transconductance so that gmo = xLOC and gmIF = xIFC. Bluetooth is easily realized by enabling capacitors through
To verify the operation of the proposed filter, the circuit a suitable capacitor bank.
was designed and simulated using a triple well 0.13 lm The tuning current in Figs. 2 and 3 was ITA = 12.7 lA
CMOS process. The supply voltage was VDD = 0.5 V and for the input transconductors and for the feedback trans-
the power consumption 2.77mW. The important point to conductor in Fig. 2 was ITC = 12.7 lA. The transconduc-
this is that transistors with a normal threshold voltage (VTH) tors used for cross coupling have three different tuning
have been used in the simulations and not the recently currents (ITB) in all six stages. The relationship between the
offered low VTH transistors. The capacitors of the filter in particular ITB in each stage of the filter, approximately, is
Fig. 8 have values C1 = C6 = 0.6C, C2 = 1.6C, following the ratio of the normalized element values of the
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78 Analog Integr Circ Sig Process (2014) 79:73–81
Fig. 9 Frequency response for signal and image for Bluetooth filter Fig. 11 IIP3 Curve for in-band linearity for Bluetooth filter
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Analog Integr Circ Sig Process (2014) 79:73–81 79
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4 Conclusion 3. Behbahani, F., Kishigami, Y., Leete, J., & Abidi, A. A. (2001).
CMOS mixers and polyphase filters for large image rejection.
IEEE Journal of Solid State Circuits, 36, 873–887.
In this paper a 12th-order differential complex filter which 4. Shi, B., Shan, W., & Andreani, P. (2002). A 57-dB image band
is suitable for Bluetooth and Zigbee protocol implemen- rejection CMOS Gm-C polyphase filter with automatic frequency
tations is described. Employment of an improved low tuning for Bluetooth. International Symposium on Circuits and
voltage transconductor allows operation with supply volt- Systems (ISCAS), 5, V169–V172.
5. Philips, K. (2003). A 4.4 mW 76 dB complex RD–ADC for
age as low as 0.5 V. The filter meets the requirements for a Bluetooth receivers. IEEE International Solid-State Circuits
complex filtering stage embedded in Bluetooth or Zigbee Conference Digest of Technical Papers ISSCC, 46, 64–65.
receivers. Also, it has the ability of independent tuning of 6. Sheng, W., Xia, B., Emira, A., Xin, C., Valero-Lopez, A. Y.,
center frequency and bandwidth, it shows low power Moon, S. T., et al. (2003). A 3-V, 0.35 lm CMOS Bluetooth
receiver IC. IEEE Journal of Solid State circuits, 38, 30–42.
consumption, and reasonable performance in terms of 7. Snelgrove, W. M., Sedra, A.S. (1981). State-space synthesis of
noise, image rejection and linearity. complex analog filters. Proceedings of the European Conference
on Circuit Theory and Design (ECCTD), 420–424.
Acknowledgments This research is financially supported by Greek 8. Lang, G.R., Brackett, P.O. (1981). Complex analogue filters.
State Scholarship Foundation (IKY). Proceedings of the European Conference on Circuit Theory and
Design (ECCTD), 412–419.
9. Martin, K. (2004). Complex signal processing is not complex.
IEEE Transactions on Circuits and System I, 51, 823–1836.
References 10. Balankutty, A., Yu, S., Feng, Y., & Kinget, P. (2010). A 0.6-V
zero-IF/low-IF receiver with integrated fractional-N synthesizer
1. Razavi, B. (1998). RF Microelectronics. Englewood Cliff’s, NJ: for 2.4-GHz ISM-band applications. IEEE Journal of Solid-State
Prentice-Hall. Circuits, 45(3), 538–553.
2. Emira, A. A., & Sanchez-Sinencio, E. (2003). A Pseudo differ- 11. Laoudias, C., & Psychalinos, C. (2011). 1.5-V complex filters
ential complex filter for bluetooth with frequency tuning. IEEE using current mirrors. IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems
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Analog Integr Circ Sig Process (2014) 79:73–81 81
12. Laoudias, C., Psychalinos, C. (2010). Low-voltage Bluetooth/ Researcher with the Department of Physics, University of Patras,
ZigBee complex filter using current mirrors. International Sym- Greece. He is currently a member of the technical staff of the
posium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS), 1268–1271. Department of Physics, University of Patras, Greece. Dr. Souliotis has
13. Alzaher, H., Tasadduq, N., & Al-Ammari, F. (2013). Optimal low 30 papers in international journal and conferences and holds an
power complex filters. IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Sys- international patent. He serves as a reviewer for many international
tems I, 60(4), 885–995. journals and he is a member of national and international professional
14. Tedeschi, M., Liscidini, A., & Castello, R. (2010). Low-power organizations. His research interests include analog and mixed-signal
quadrature receivers for ZigBee (IEEE 802.15.4) applications. integrated circuits for high-speed communication applications, cur-
IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, 45(9), 1710–1719. rent mode circuits, continuous time active filters and CMOS-BiC-
15. Guthrie, B., Hughes, J., Sayers, T., & Spencer, A. (2005). A CMOS MOS VLSI design.
gyrator low-IF filter for a dual-mode Bluetooth/ZigBee transceiver.
IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, 40(9), 1872–1879. Spyridon Vlassis received the
16. Psychalinos, C. (2008). Low-voltage log-domain complex filters. B.Sc. in Physics in 1994, the
IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I, 55(11), 3404–3412. M.Sc. degree in Electronic
17. Samiotis P. and Psychalinos, C. (2013). Low-voltage complex Physics in 1996 and the Ph.D.
filters using current feedback operational amplifiers. ISRN Elec- degree in 2000, from Aristotle
tronics. doi:10.1155/2013/915758. University of Thessaloniki,
18. Vlassis, S. (2012). 0.5 V CMOS inverter-based tunable trans- Greece. He was working as
conductor. Analog Integrated Circuits and Signal Processing, senior engineer for VC funded
72(1), 289–292. startup companies in the devel-
19. Arya, R., Souliotis, G., Vlassis, S., & Psychalinos, C. (2013). A opment and commercialization
0.5 V 3rd order tunable gm-C filter. Radio Engineering, 22(1), of high-performance RFICs for
174–178. wireless communications and
20. Nauta, B. (1992). A CMOS transconductance-C filter technique RF MEMS for consumer appli-
for very high frequencies. IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, cations. He has published over
27(2), 142–153. 50 papers in journals and con-
ferences and holds one U.S. patent. He is currently Associate pro-
fessor with Electronics Laboratory, Department of Physics.
Richa Arya was born in Muzf- University of Patras, Greece. His research interests are in analog and
farnagar, Uttar Pradesh, India in RF integrated circuits and high-speed inter-chip interfaces.
1983. She received her B.Sc.
degree in 2003 and M.Sc. Costas Psychalinos received
degree in 2005, both in Physics, B.Sc. degree in Physics and
from M.J.P. Rohilkhand Uni- Ph.D. degree in Electronics
versity, Bareilly, India. She has from the University of Patras,
worked as a Part-time Lecturer Greece, in 1986 and 1991,
in Vardhman College, India respectively. From 1993 to
from 2005–2007. She had 1995, he worked as Post-Doc-
earned scholarship from State toral Researcher with the VLSI
Scholarship Foundation (IKY) Design Laboratory at the Uni-
for post-graduate studies in versity of Patras. From 1996 to
2009. She is currently a PhD 2000, he was an Adjunct Lec-
candidate in the Electronics turer with the Department of
Laboratory of University of Patras. Her current research interests Computer Engineering and
include VLSI circuits, analog filter design, Complex filters, gm-C Informatics at the University of
filter, Low voltage devices. Patras. From 2000 to 2004 he
was an Assistant Professor with the Electronics Laboratory, Depart-
George Souliotis received the ment of Physics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. From
B.Sc. degree in Physics from the 2004 to 2009 he was an Assistant Professor and currently he is an
University of Ioannina, Greece Associate Professor with the Electronics Laboratory, Department of
in 1993 and the M.Sc. and Ph.D. Physics, University of Patras, Greece. His research area is in the
degrees in Electronics from the continuous and discrete-time analog filtering, including companding
University of Patras, Greece, in filters, current amplifier filters, CCII and CFOA filters, and sampled-
1998 and 2003, respectively. He data filters, and in the development of ultra-low voltage building
has been with international and blocks for biomedical applications. He also serves as a member of the
startup companies, designing Editorial Board of the Analog Integrated Circuits and Signal Pro-
high-speed circuits for elec- cessing Journal and Associate Editor of the Circuits Systems and
tronic systems. From 2002, he Signal Processing Journal.
serves as an part time Adjunct
Lecturer at the Department of
Electrical Engineering, Techno-
logical Educational Institute of
Patras, Greece. From 2004 to 2008 he worked as a Post-Doctoral
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