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Abstract

An analog baseband chain for a synthetic aperture radar receiver implemented in a 130 nm CMOS technology is presented in this paper. Occupying 0.23 mm2 of silicon area, the baseband chain consists of a three-stage variable gain amplifier (VGA), a 5th-order gm-C low-pass filter (LPF) and an output buffer. The gain of the chain can be controlled by tuning the control voltages of the VGA and has a range from 25 to 34 dB. 8 dB of the gain is embedded into the LPF. The bandwidth of the LPF is programmable from 100 to 190 MHz by means of capacitor matrices. The chain, which uses a 1.2 V supply voltage, achieves an input-referred noise density of 4 nV/\( \sqrt {\text{Hz}} \) and an in-band IIP3 of −46 dBV rms.

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Abbreviations

SAR:

Synthetic aperture radar

VGA:

Variable gain amplifier

LPF:

Low-pass filter

OBUF:

Output buffer

ICs:

Integrated circuits

LNA:

Low-noise amplifier

ADC:

Analog-to-digital converter

NMCs:

Negative Miller capacitors

PVT:

Process, voltage and temperature

CMFF:

Common-mode feedforward

CMFB:

Common-mode feedback

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Acknowledgments

This work is supported by European Space Agency (ESA).

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Correspondence to Faizah Abu Bakar.

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Abu Bakar, F., Nehal, Q., Ukkonen, P. et al. Analog baseband chain of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) receiver. Analog Integr Circ Sig Process 75, 41–51 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10470-012-9979-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10470-012-9979-4

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