A 0.5-V BLE Transceiver With a 1.9-mW RX Achieving −96.4-dBm Sensitivity and −27-dBm Tolerance for Intermodulation From Interferers at 6- and 12-MHz Offsets

This article presents a 0.5-V RF transceiver fully compliant with Bluetooth low energy (BLE) standards. The receiver (RX) fabricated in a 22-nm fully depleted silicon on insulator (FD-SOI) process achieves a sensitivity of −96.4 dBm, an intermodulation tolerance of −27 dBm for interferers at 6- and 12-MHz offsets, while consuming 1.9 mW. An RX-chain with a gain-programmable low-noise transconductance amplifier (LNTA) provides good linearity over a wide input power range. The LNTA changes amplifier topology according to the gain setting. It achieves a gain range of 41 dB and the IIP3 of −13 dBm at maximum gain. The proposed asynchronous SAR-ADC-based time-to-digital converter (TDC) for the all-digital phase-locked loop (ADPLL) is suitable for low-voltage operation and low-power consumption. It achieves a differential nonlinearity (DNL) of ±0.62 LSB and an integral nonlinearity (INL) of ±0.63 LSB.