A Unified Design Methodology for Front-End RF/mmWave Receivers

Michailidis, Anastasios; Chatzis, Alexandros; Tsimpou, Panayiota; Gogolou, Vasiliki; Noulis, Thomas

doi:10.3390/electronics14020235

Open AccessArticle

A Unified Design Methodology for Front-End RF/mmWave Receivers

by

Anastasios Michailidis

^1,2,*

,

Alexandros Chatzis

¹,

Panayiota Tsimpou

¹,

Vasiliki Gogolou

^2,3

and

Thomas Noulis

^1,2

¹

Electronics Laboratory, Department of Physics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece

²

Center of Interdisciplinary Research and Innovation (CIRI-AUTH), 57001 Thessaloniki, Greece

³

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece

^*

Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

Electronics 2025, 14(2), 235; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics14020235

Submission received: 4 December 2024 / Revised: 20 December 2024 / Accepted: 3 January 2025 / Published: 8 January 2025

(This article belongs to the Special Issue RF/MM-Wave Circuits Design and Applications, 2nd Edition)

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Abstract

In this work, a unified design methodology for front-end RF/mmWave receivers is presented, aiming to significantly accelerate the design procedure of the front-end RF blocks in complex RX/TX chain implementations. The proposed design methodology is based on optimization loops with well-defined cost functions so as to minimize the design iterations that may be encountered during specification tuning. As proof of concept, two essential RF blocks widely used in RF receivers, a low-noise amplifier (LNA) and a voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO), were designed using the proposed unified methodology with a 65 nm RF-CMOS processing node. Finally, the derived designs were compared to similar designs in the literature, proving that the proposed unified methodology is capable of synthesizing RF/mmWave LNAs and VCOs with industry-standard specifications within a significantly faster time frame.

Keywords: low-noise amplifiers (LNAs); voltage-controlled oscillators (VCOs); unified design methodology; network theory

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MDPI and ACS Style

Michailidis, A.; Chatzis, A.; Tsimpou, P.; Gogolou, V.; Noulis, T. A Unified Design Methodology for Front-End RF/mmWave Receivers. Electronics 2025, 14, 235. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics14020235

AMA Style

Michailidis A, Chatzis A, Tsimpou P, Gogolou V, Noulis T. A Unified Design Methodology for Front-End RF/mmWave Receivers. Electronics. 2025; 14(2):235. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics14020235

Chicago/Turabian Style

Michailidis, Anastasios, Alexandros Chatzis, Panayiota Tsimpou, Vasiliki Gogolou, and Thomas Noulis. 2025. "A Unified Design Methodology for Front-End RF/mmWave Receivers" Electronics 14, no. 2: 235. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics14020235

APA Style

Michailidis, A., Chatzis, A., Tsimpou, P., Gogolou, V., & Noulis, T. (2025). A Unified Design Methodology for Front-End RF/mmWave Receivers. Electronics, 14(2), 235. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics14020235

Note that from the first issue of 2016, this journal uses article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.

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A Unified Design Methodology for Front-End RF/mmWave Receivers

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