Broadband RF Front-End Featuring a Reconfigurable Q-Enhanced Filter for Upper Mid-Band 6G Receivers

This paper presents a radio frequency front-end (RFFE) comprised of a cascode low-noise amplifier (LNA) and a reconfigurable Q-enhanced filter. Employing a dual-resonant input matching network, the LNA attains a significantly wide bandwidth. The filter consists of four Q-enhanced resonators enabling three modes of operation: 1) dual-band filter, 2) single band-pass filter (BPF) along with a tunable in-band (IB) notch, and 3) dual-band filter with extreme out-of-band (OOB) blocker rejection. The fractional bandwidth and center frequency are continuously tunable in the range of 1-12% and 7-20 GHz respectively. Designed and simulated in 22-nm FD-SOI technology, the RFFE achieves 33 dB gain, 4.4 dB NF, and −6.1 dBm IB-IIP3. Moreover, the RFFE can attenuate OOB and IB interferers by at least 50 dB and 56 dB respectively. The power consumption varies between 26 mW and 50 mW depending on the configuration, and the occupied active area is 0.19 mm^2 .