Silicon chips for GSM base station receivers

This paper describes silicon RFICs designed for GSM900/DCS1800 base station receivers. GSM standard and radio requirements are reviewed, and circuits that meet those requirements are discussed. A low-phase noise VCO, a high linearity low noise amplifier, a high linearity mixer, and a low-residual phase noise buffer amplifier, all fully integrated in 0.25 μm BiCMOS technology, are presented. Performance of these circuits demonstrated that it is feasible to use low cost silicon technology for base station receiver radios