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IEEE JOURNAL OF SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS, VOL. 38, NO.

7, JULY 2003 1163

A 35-mW 3.6-mm2 Fully Integrated


0.18-m CMOS GPS Radio
Giampiero Montagna, Giuseppe Gramegna, Ivan Bietti, Massimo Franciotta, Member, IEEE,
Andrea Baschirotto, Senior Member, IEEE, Placido De Vita, Roberto Pelleriti, Mario Paparo, Member, IEEE, and
Rinaldo Castello, Fellow, IEEE

Abstract—A single-chip CMOS Global Positioning System in terms of cost, and would speed up the integration of GPS ca-
(GPS) radio has been integrated using only a couple of external pabilities into mobile products. This motivated the development
passive components for the input matching network and one ex- of GPS macro blocks and radios in CMOS technology [1], [2].
ternal reference for the synthesizer. The receiver downconverts the
GPS L1 signal at 1575.42 MHz to an IF of 9.45 MHz. The complete However, the cost effectiveness of this solution depends on
front-end and frequency synthesizer section have been integrated: both reduction of external components and die area of the GPS
low noise amplifier, image rejection mixer, IF active filter, and the radio. Since the silicon area of RF CMOS circuits, including
full phase-locked loop synthesizer, including voltage-controlled on-chip inductors, does not shrink at the same rate as technology
oscillator and loop filter. The front-end measured performances scaling, the reduction of the total cost poses a severe challenge.
are 81-dB maximum gain, 5.3-dB noise figure, and 30-dB image
rejection. The synthesizer features a phase noise of 95 dBc/Hz at This paper describes the design and measurement of a fully
1-MHz offset and a total integrated phase noise of less than 7 rms integrated CMOS GPS receiver targeting active antenna appli-
in the 500-Hz–1.5-MHz band. The front-end and the synthesizer cations with an architecture geared to highest integration and
draw, respectively, 11 and 9 mA from a 1.8-V supply. The architec- minimal silicon area at the lowest possible power consumption
ture of the front-end and synthesizer has been geared to high level (i.e., comparable to the best ones available [1], [2]).
of integration and reduction of silicon area at the lowest possible
power consumption. Consequently, the one reported here is the The paper is organized as follows. The GPS system, archi-
smallest and most integrated CMOS GPS receiver reported so far. tecture, and specifications are summarized in Section II, and
Index Terms—CMOS analog integrated circuit, communication, the chip design is reported in Section III. Implementation de-
Global Positioning System (GPS), low-noise amplifier, low power tails and experimental measurements are reported, respectively,
dissipation, receivers, single-chip radio. in Sections IV and V. Finally, in Section VI, conclusions and
comparison with the state of the art are given.
I. INTRODUCTION
II. ARCHITECTURE AND SPECIFICATIONS
G LOBAL Positioning System (GPS) receivers for the con-
sumer market require solutions that are compact, cheap,
and low power. Manufacturers of cellular telephones, portable
The GPS signal code is a direct-sequence spread spectrum,
and the type of spread spectrum employed by GPS is known
computers, watches, and other mobile devices are looking for as binary phase-shift keying direct-sequence spread spectrum
ways to embed GPS into their products. Thus, there is a strong (BPSK DSSS). In a spread-spectrum system, data are modu-
motivation to provide highly integrated solutions at the lowest lated onto the carrier such that the transmitted signal has a larger
possible power consumption. GPS radios consist of a front-end bandwidth than the information rate of the data. The term “di-
and a digital baseband section incorporating a digital processor. rect sequence” is used when the spreading of the spectrum is
While for the baseband processor, cost-reduction reasons dic- accomplished by phase modulation of the carrier.
tate the use of the most dense digital CMOS technology, for The GPS satellites broadcast signals in a 20 MHz-wide band
the front-end, the best option in terms of power consumption is (L1 band) centered at 1.575 GHz. Two DSSS signals are broad-
a SiGe BiCMOS technology. This explains why several com- cast in this band. They are known as the P code (or precision
mercial GPS radios consist of dual or multichip systems using code) and the C/A code (or coarse acquisition code) (Fig. 1).
the best technology option for the front-end and baseband pro- For the GPS C/A code channel, most of the signal energy is
cessor. On the other hand, the implementation of a stand-alone located in a 2-MHz band which lies at the middle of the 20-MHz
GPS radio into a single chip in CMOS technology is appealing GPS-P code channel. At the antenna of a GPS receiver, the re-
ceived signal power is typically 130 dBm. In the 2-MHz main
Manuscript received November 27, 2002; revised February 24, 2003. lobe of the C/A code, the noise power (KTB) is 111 dBm
G. Montagna and I. Bietti are with the Studio di Microelettronica, STMicro- with an associate signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at the antenna of
electronics, 27100 Pavia, Italy (e-mail: giampiero.montagna@st.com). 19 dB.
G. Gramegna, M. Franciotta, P. DeVita, R. Pelleriti, and M. Paparo are with
STMicroelectronics, 95100 Catania, Italy. In the past, several architectures have been used to relax the
A. Baschirotto is with the Department of Innovation Engineering, University constraints of the GPS receiver using off-chip filtering and ex-
of Lecce, 73100 Lecce, Italy. ternal components. For instance, a dual-conversion architecture
R. Castello is with the Department of Electronics, University of Pavia, 27100
Pavia, Italy. with a first IF between 100–200 MHz and a second close to dc
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JSSC.2003.813298 relaxes the constraints between selectivity and sensitivity of the
0018-9200/03$17.00 © 2003 IEEE

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1164 IEEE JOURNAL OF SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS, VOL. 38, NO. 7, JULY 2003

Fig. 1. GPS L1 band signal spectrum.


Fig. 2. GPS Radio embedded in application from downconversion to code
de-spreading.
receiver, i.e., allows using an external filter in front of the GPS
low noise amplifier (LNA) with a lower quality factor. How- TABLE I
GPS RADIO SPECS
ever, this comes with a penalty in terms of power consump-
tion (two downconversions and IF section running at high fre-
quency) or in terms of bill of materials, since external IF filtering
would be required. Another possibility is to use a single IF at a
lower frequency with high quality factor off-chip RF filtering
in front of the receiver. Clearly, the use of external components
allows reducing the burden of the on-chip GPS receiver, and
so its power consumption. Since we target a high level of inte-
gration, low-IF or zero-IF architecture with integrated IF filters
must be selected. However, the presence of most of the energy
at the center of the spectrum makes the use of a zero-IF archi-
tecture for a CMOS implementation difficult, due to the pres-
ence of flicker noise. For this reason, a low-IF architecture with
image rejection has been selected in order to relax constraints on
the external RF filter and to reduce the noise figure (NF) of the
receiver. The associate penalty is an increased complexity and
power consumption. An IF below 10 MHz guarantees a low en-
ergy at the image frequency and the feasibility of an integrated
IF filter at a relatively low power consumption. Choosing an IF
of 9.45 MHz, the required rejection is about 30 dB.
A detailed architecture block diagram of the receiver is shown
in Fig. 2. The chip is fed with the GPS L1 signal from an active
antenna, via an external RF filter. This allows remote placement
clock signals necessary for baseband ADC and synchronization
of the antenna from the receiver itself and relaxes noise require-
of the correlator within the digital processor.
ments. A total voltage gain for the GPS receiver of 85 dB has
A summary of the GPS radio specs is reported in Table I.
been chosen. The combination of external LNA and GPS re-
ceiver brings the output signal (which is dominated by noise) to
III. CHIP DESIGN
a level sufficiently high for the external analog-to-digital con-
verter (ADC). For instance, if a 2-MHz band is considered, an As stated, the overall design has been geared to a high level of
external voltage gain between the antenna element and the chip integration and reduction of silicon area at the lowest possible
input of 20 dB (including losses associated with the external power consumption. Below, the detailed design choices in the
filter and connectors) makes the total output noise power equal various sections are described.
to 111 dBm 105 dB 6 dBm.
In order to reduce power consumption and die area, the A. RF Section
internal LNA uses a single-ended RF input. The LNA–mixer The LNA has been designed to have a very low noise since
combination has an input 1-dB compression point (P1 dB) of it sets a lower bound for the total receiver sensitivity. A high
28 dBm, therefore, the use of a low-quality external RF filter voltage gain is necessary to sufficiently reduce the noise contri-
is enough to prevent blocking of the receiver (RX) chain from bution of the following mixers.
UMTS and GSM carriers. A common source configuration with inductive degeneration
The reported GPS radio downconverts the GPS L1 spread- provides high voltage gain and low NF, as shown in Fig. 3. In
spectrum BPSK-modulated signal to an IF of 9.45 MHz (fully fact, in a narrow band, this structure allows achieving a noise
differential outputs) and provides two programmable CMOS factor close to the theoretical minimum. A single-ended LNA

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MONTAGNA et al.: FULLY INTEGRATED CMOS GPS RADIO 1165

Fig. 3. LNA and mixer.

has been preferred to a balanced one to reduce power consump-


tion and silicon area. The input of the mixer is still single ended,
but from its output, the signal is taken in a differential fashion.
In this topology, at a given frequency, there is an optimum de-
vice size for which the sum of gate induced and thermal noise
has a minimum. Because of the strong sensitivity of the gate-in-
duced current noise to the intrinsic gate capacitance (it follows
a square law), an improvement can be obtained with the intro-
duction of an additional capacitance placed in parallel
to the intrinsic gate capacitance of the input transistor [3].
The insertion of this capacitance adds a degree of freedom to Fig. 4. Second-order IF polyphase.
play with to achieve a better compromise between thermal and
induced-gate noise. Therefore, a new optimum condition, with
a lower noise figure minimum, can be achieved. This is paid by
a slightly lower transconductance gain.
For the single-ended version, an input matching of 50 has
been chosen because a higher value results in a worse external
disturbances rejection. With a current consumption of 2 mA, the
LNA features NF dB.
The LNA is followed by the - mixers that are ac-coupled
to the LNA and are based on a modified Gilbert cell (Fig. 3).
The mixers can be directly driven by the on-chip frequency syn-
thesizer or by a single external local oscillator (LO) signal that Fig. 5. IF filter.
drives an integrated RF polyphase filter. Improved linearity and
reduced noise are achieved by subtracting dc current from
inal transfer function features a larger bandwidth (6 MHz) than
the switching pair.
the one needed (2 MHz). However, a ripple in the GPS band
The load is a simple resistor. The current consumption is
(8.45–10.45 MHz) lower than 0.5 dB is guaranteed in any case.
1.5 mA for each mixer with an input P1 dB of 12 dBm.
To optimize the power consumption for a given linearity and
noise, an active RC solution has been chosen. The filter is built
B. IF Section as a cascade of a bandpass and a low-pass cell, implementing a
After downconversion, the signal is amplified using a vari- fourth-order transfer function (Fig. 5). The filter also provides
able-gain amplifier (VGA) with 20-dB gain programmability an antialiasing function before the baseband ADC (Fig. 2), as-
(Fig. 2). A second-order integrated passive polyphase filter suring 20-dB attenuation at 28 MHz.
has been used to recombine the and signal path [4]. The A gain programmability of 40 dB ( 10–30 dB) in two stages
polyphase filter is an RC structure with inputs and outputs has been implemented in the filter by digitally selecting the
symmetrically disposed (Fig. 4). The relatively small ratio value of and . As the gain is programmed, a constant
between the signal band and IF frequency allows building the input impedance should be maintained, so as not to affect the
combiner as the cascade of two RC passive poly-phase filters. frequency response of the previous passive polyphase filter. This
A rejection of 30 dB across the 2-MHz band is achieved for condition is achieved using the solution shown in Fig. 6. As far
20% RC time constant spread. as the second biquad cell is concerned, a relatively high sensi-
The IF filter is centered at 9.45 MHz. To fit the 2-MHz GPS tivity of its pole position on the value of the cell gain has been
band, even in presence of component values variations, the nom- observed. This is due to the different feedback conditions in

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1166 IEEE JOURNAL OF SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS, VOL. 38, NO. 7, JULY 2003

Fig. 6. Interface between polyphase and first biquad.

Fig. 8. PLL synthesizer.

Fig. 7. Connection between the first and the second biquad cells.

which the first opamp is operating. This problem has been over-
come by using the scheme of Fig. 7. In this case, for any gain
value, the total impedance for the feedback factor is always the
same, and no pole deviation is then observed. Fig. 9. VCO: dual paths indicated with thin lines.
The opamp used in the filter and VGA uses a two-stage
topology in order to keep sufficiently high gain even with a a wide-band PLL to reduce its contribution to the total phase
resistive load. Each differential opamp performs a dc gain of noise. The added benefit of this choice is the integration of the
54 dB with 7 pF//8 k load, which is the worst operation con- loop filter in a limited silicon area. This is highly desirable to
dition, and 200-MHz unity gain frequency. The filter exhibits reduce the risk of VCO pulling due to external interferences
a measured 4 dBm IIP3 (with a maximum gain level) and a coupled through the wire bondings. A 500-kHz band is imple-
simulated input referred noise of 15 nV/sqrtHz. mented with 12 pF in parallel with the series of 300 pF and
6.4 k .
C. Synthesizer The ring oscillator is implemented, cascading a transconduc-
The synthesizer, depicted in Fig. 8, provides LO quadrature tance stage to a current-controlled oscillator (CCO) (Fig. 9). The
signals for the image-reject mixer and two clock signals needed basic CCO cell, together with the tail current generator (Mtail)
to synchronize the correlator inside the external baseband pro- is depicted in Fig. 10. Alternate delay paths, shown in Fig. 10
cessor. As for the previously described blocks, the main concern with thin lines, are used to achieve higher oscillation frequen-
has been a high level of integration and reduction of silicon area cies with the same power budget [5]. The dual scheme is imple-
at the lowest possible power consumption. The requirement of mented using the complementary pMOS inputs of each cell of
high integration and the need to reduce risks of LO pulling due the CCO, reported in Fig. 10. The cascade combination of the
to off-chip components have driven the choice of a fully inte- stage and the CCO yields a typical of 800 MHz/V.
grated voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) and loop filter. Such a high value allows compensating for all process
For this application, we took advantage of the low require- spreads and temperature variations, and can be accepted due to
ments on phase noise and spurious rejection using a ring os- the on-chip integration of the loop filter that reduces risks of LO
cillator within a wide-band phase-locked loop (PLL) instead of pulling.
an inductance-capacitance (LC) VCO. This choice resulted in The total current consumption of the VCO is 2.8 mA.
a dramatic reduction of the silicon area, since it does not re- A total dividing ratio of has been introduced, where
quire integrated inductors or varactors. Furthermore, the ring is a programmable integer between 1 and 16. This allows the
oscillator directly provides - quadrature LO signals needed use of multiple TXCO references as clock reference with
by the image-reject mixer and simplifies the portability of the . The GPS radio has been characterized
GPS radio to a pure CMOS process with associated low-quality with and . In order to reduce overall power con-
factor on-chip inductors. The use of a ring oscillator requires sumption and complexity, the 41 divider has been implemented

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MONTAGNA et al.: FULLY INTEGRATED CMOS GPS RADIO 1167

Fig. 10. Inverter used in the CCO. In dashed box: the pMOS inputs used by
the dual paths.

Fig. 12. Measured S11.

Fig. 13. Image rejection bandwidth at IF.

Fig. 11. GPS radio plus DNS generators. (DNS) generators test structures integrated on the same die
to experimentally compare the immunity of the GPS radio to
substrate noise with different substrate resistivity. Without bond
with a divide-by-four prescaler, followed by a low-power frac-
pads, the GPS radio measures 2 1.8 mm . The single-ended
tional-10.25 divider.
LNA (0.36 mm ), placed at the top left corner, is isolated from
The charge pump circuit is implemented to maximize the
the digital circuitry by placing the mixer at its bottom and
output voltage range due to the reduced supply voltage. Both the
folding around it the combiner-preamp and the IF filter. The
UP and DOWN portion of the circuit are realized as rail-to-rail
VCO with its decoupling capacitances (VCO Dec in Fig. 11)
switched pMOS and nMOS current mirrors and feature a
and the integrated loop filter take, respectively, 0.38 mm and
speedup circuit to allow higher comparison frequencies. The
0.42 mm . Two divide-by-four prescalers are placed on top of
saturation voltages of the output pMOS and nMOS transistors
the VCO. One is used inside the PLL, the other offers a dummy
limit the maximum and minimum allowed loop-filter voltage
load to the ring oscillator in order to keep precise - matching
to 200 mV, –200 mV. The charge pump current injected
(normally turned off). The same divide-by-four prescaler can
into the loop filter is 0.9 mA.
be used (turned on) to measure PLL phase noise. The two bias
generators are labeled as B1 in Fig. 11.
IV. IMPLEMENTATION DETAILS The GPS radio has been housed in a standard 52-pin package
The GPS radio has been integrated in a 0.18- m RF CMOS (VFQFPN52) that allowed multiple ground downbondings
process with six metal levels, nMOS in excess of 55 GHz, to a common ground slug; each critical building block has a
high linearity 0.85-fF/ m MIM capacitances and 10- cm dedicated ground connected to its local p well. All dedicated
substrate resistivity. The availability of the triple well allows grounds are connected by bond wires to the common ground
isolation of the nMOS transistors from the substrate. High slug. The return path of the LNA uses two separated (and
quality factor MOS varactors are available, while for induc- orthogonal) ground pins. Patterned ground shields have been
tors is about 7 at 1.6 GHz. introduced under the inductor and the RF pads to reduce
A photograph of the fabricated test chip is shown in Fig. 11. substrate losses. All pins are protected against electrostatic
This includes the GPS radio and three digital noise and spurs discharge (ESD).

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1168 IEEE JOURNAL OF SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS, VOL. 38, NO. 7, JULY 2003

TABLE II
RX CHAIN

Fig. 14. PLL phase noise measured at f o=4.

TABLE III
SYNTHESIZER AND LO BUFFERS

Fig. 15. RF signal downconverted by the GPS radio to 9.45 MHz.

V. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
The full GPS radio (i.e., receiver chain RX and synthesizer
working together), housed in a VFQFPN52 package and sol-
dered into an application board, has been characterized with An RF carrier downconverted at IF by the GPS radio is re-
the three DNS generators turned off. The RX features S11 ported in Fig. 15. The most significant spurs (located at the com-
dB, NF dB, and conversion gain dB. The parison frequency and its harmonics) are smaller than 35 dBc.
measured VGA range is 60 dB. The measured S11 is reported The frequency response of the RX chain is visible in the same
in Fig. 12. plot as it shapes the thermal noise floor.
The wanted and image signal after downconversion per- A simplified version of the GPS receiver chain that uses an
formed by the GPS radio are reported in Fig. 13 for one sample. external LO signal has been characterized by soldering an un-
Measured over a 4-MHz band for 15 samples, IR is always packaged die into an application board. The - LOs needed
higher than 30 dB. by the mixer are generated by an on-chip polyphase filter. The
The PLL with its on-chip loop filter has been characterized unpackaged RX features NF dB and dB.
and the total phase noise, integrated between 500 Hz and It has been experimentally verified that the higher NF and
1.5 MHz, is below 7 rms in all measured samples (Fig. 14). reduced gain in the packaged GPS radio is not due to phase noise
Another version of the GPS radio has been integrated in a pure of the synthesizer. The worse performance has been attributed
CMOS process (i.e., low resistivity substrate and low quality primarily to the impedances of the on-chip LO buffer, compared
factor on-chip inductors) in order to experimentally verify the with that of the internal polyphase used to feed the mixer in
technology portability of this solution. No significant changes the unpackaged version. This problem can be easily fixed in a
have been observed. following version.

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MONTAGNA et al.: FULLY INTEGRATED CMOS GPS RADIO 1169

TABLE IV
STATE-OF-THE-ART GPS RADIOS

the small die area and the high level of integration of this GPS
radio are due to design and architectural choices (single-ended
LNA, ring oscillator VCO with internal loop filter, and active
RC filter) and, to a smaller extent, to the 0.18- m process used.
The chosen approach resulted a net power consumption of
35.4 mW.
The feasibility of a fully integrated 3.6-mm CMOS GPS
radio with RF performance suitable for active antenna applica-
tions has been reported. The next step is the single-chip integra-
tion of the GPS radio together with a digital baseband processor.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Fig. 16. IF interferer generated by DNS downconverted by the GPS radio to
IF. The authors would like to thank G. Abbotto, G. Catrini,
M. Bonaventura, N. Bellantone, R. Coppaloni, M. Leggenda,
and F. Ramaioli for technical contributions, and P. Erratico for
The GPS radio net power consumption is 35.4 mW at 1.8 V. A
discussions and encouragement of this work.
summary of the GPS radio performances is reported in Tables II
and III.
The functionality of the GPS radio with DNS generators REFERENCES
turned on has also been experimentally verified. The DNS [1] F. Behbahani et al., “A 27-mW GPS Radio in 0.35-m CMOS,” in
IEEE Int. Solid-State Circuits Conf. Dig. Tech. Papers, Feb. 2002, pp.
simulates the high-order harmonics produced by the presence 398–399.
on-chip of a baseband processor. The DNS consists of a ring [2] P. Vancorenland et al., “A fully integrated GPS receiver front-end with
oscillator where it is possible to sweep oscillation frequency 40-mW power consumption,” in IEEE Int. Solid-State Circuits Conf.
Dig. Tech. Papers, Feb. 2002, pp. 396–397.
and a /4 divider connected to an n /p substrate diode. Each [3] P. Andreani and H. Sjoland, “Noise optimization of an inductively de-
DNS generator takes 0.34 mm . It has been verified that the generated CMOS low noise amplifier,” IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. II,
chip is always functional and the effect of DNS is negligible. vol. 48, pp. 835–841, Sept. 2001.
[4] J. Crols et al., “An analog integrated polyphase filter for a high perfor-
For frequencies close to the GPS L1 signal, either the mance low-IF receiver,” in Proc. VLSI Circuits Symp., 1995, pp. 87–88.
signal injected by the DNS over supply and ground, or the [5] C.-H. Park and B. Kim, “A low-noise, 900-MHz VCO in 0.6-m
fourth harmonic of the DNS signal /4 (injected into the substrate CMOS,” IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits, vol. 34, pp. 586–591, May 1999.
diode) is downconverted by the LNA-mixer and amplified by
the IF filter (since it falls into the IF band). The measured
amplitude (as shown in Fig. 16) is 33 dBm, therefore, the
Giampiero Montagna was born in Tortona, Italy, in
input signal is 124 dBm. 1972. He received the M.E. degree in electronic en-
gineering from the University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy,
in 1997.
VI. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK In the same year he had a fellowship with the
Microelectronics Laboratory of University of Pavia
A comparison with recently published data is reported in where he was involved in the design of SC filters
Table IV. This GPS radio features the smallest area and the and ADC for disk drives applications. Since 1999,
he has been with the “Studio di Microelettronica”
highest level of integration ever reported. The better power STMicroelectronics, Pavia, Italy, engaging in the
performance achieved by [1] can be attributed to the lower IF design of integrated CMOS receivers for wireless
frequency that allows for a gain-bandwidth reduction in the LAN and GPS. He has authored and coauthored presentations at international
conferences, papers in international journals, and he holds two patents. His
IF filter opamps and the use of a low-power (but large area) present interests are in the field of high-frequency integrated circuits for
quadrature LC VCO instead of a ring oscillator. As pointed out, telecommunications.

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1170 IEEE JOURNAL OF SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS, VOL. 38, NO. 7, JULY 2003

Giuseppe Gramegna received the M.S.E.E. degree Andrea Baschirotto (S’89–M’95–SM’01) was born
equivalent (summa cum laude) in 1993 and the Ph.D. in 1965 in Legnago, Italy. In 1989, he graduated in
degree in 1996 from the Politecnico di Bari, Bari, electronic engineering (summa cum laude) from the
Italy. University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy. In 1994, he received
From 1996 to 1997, he was with the Max Planck the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the
Istitut, Heidelberg, Germany, working on CMOS University of Pavia.
charge amplifiers. From 1997 to 1998 he was with In 1994, he joined the Department of Electronics,
IMEC, Leuven, Belgium, working on ADCs for University of Pavia as Researcher (Assistant
video applications and electrometers for satellite Professor). In 1998, he joined the University of
applications. Since 1998, he has been with STMi- Lecce, Lecce, Italy, as an Associate Professor. Since
croelectronics, Catania, Italy. There he has designed 1989, he has collaborated with STMicroelectronics,
several RF CMOS/BiCMOS RF building blocks in the 1–10 GHz frequency Catania, Italy, for the design of ASIC. Since 1991, he has been associated
range. Among them, the first ever reported sub-1 dB Noise Figure 900-MHz with I.N.F.N. (1991–1998 with Section of Milan and in 1999 with Section
CMOS LNA with ESD protection structure. Since 2000, he has been respon- of Lecce) for the design and realization of read-out channel for high-energy
sible for R&D for RF IPs. His current research involves RF CMOS and SiGe physics experiments (like L3) and space experiments (like AMS). In 1999/2000
BiCMOS implementations of fully integrated transceivers and the design of he collaborated with MEDICO S.p.A., Rubano, Italy, for the design of a
RF IPs. He holds several international patents and he has authored/coauthored low-power front-end for implantable device (pacemaker) applications. His
papers in the field of ultra-low noise circuits for applications ranging from main research interests are in the design of mixed analog/digital integrated
charge sensing to RF transceivers. circuits, in particular, for low-power and seven or high-speed signal processing.
He has authored and coauthored more than 40 papers in international journals,
more than 50 presentations at international conferences (with published
proceedings), two book chapters, and 10 industrial patents. In addition, he has
coauthored more than 120 papers within research collaborations on high-energy
physics experiments.
Dr. Bachirotto was Guest Editor for the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS
AND SYSTEMS—PART II special issue on IEEE ISCAS 1998, and he is now
serving IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS—PART II as an Asso-
ciate Editor. He was the Technical Program Committee Chairman for ESSCIRC
2002.

Ivan Bietti was born in Cremona, Italy, in 1967. He


received the degree in electronic engineering from the
University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy in 1993.
In the same year he joined SGS-Thomson
Microelectronics in Agrate, Milan, Italy, where he
was involved in the design of analog and mixed Placido De Vita was born in Catania, Italy, in 1970.
analog/digital integrated circuits for telecommunica- He received the B.S.E.E. (with honors) and M.S.E.E.
tions. From 1996 to 1998 he was in Dublin, Ireland, degrees in electronics engineering from Catania Uni-
working for the same company in the Computer and versity, Catania, Italy, in 1997.
Peripherals Group designing analog CMOS filters, Between 1997 and 1999, he worked for ITEL,
equalizers, and PLLs for disk drives read/write Catania, Italy, where he was responsible for the
channels. Since the beginning of 1999 he has been with the RF group within the transmission section of a telecommunication system.
Studio di Microelettronica. His present interests are in the field of high-speed His activity concerned the development of a system
frequency synthesizers and low noise amplifiers. He holds several European for the transmission of digital signals on a fixed
patents and six U.S. patents, mostly in the telecommunications area. network. In 1999, he joined STMicroelectronics,
Catania, Italy, as an RF IC Application Engineer
in the Wireless Group. His activities are concerned with the characterization
of analog blocks such as mixer, LNA, VCO, PLL, and a single chip for a
dual-system GSM/DCS. Other activities were the characterization of devices
for a chip set for the W-CDMA system and the development of the application
board for an integrated GPS system. Currently, he is the Group Leader for
the Telecom Team in the Application Group in Catania with the mission to
assure the Telecom group designed chips validation, customer support, RF
architecture, and market competitor analysis and new measurement technique
research and development. He is also coauthor on two papers on LNA and I /Q
modulator applications.

Massimo Franciotta (M’97) was born in Salerno,


Italy, in 1967. He graduated from the University of
Pavia, Pavia, Italy, in 1991.
He spent two years in the Microelectronic
Laboratory of the same university as a Research
Assistant participating in national research programs
on the design of analog integrated circuits. After
his military service, in 1994 he joined CSEM Roberto Pelleriti was born in Catania, Italy, in
(Centre Suisse d’Electronique et Microtechnique), 1970. He received the M.S.E.E. degree equivalent,
Neuchâtel, Switzerland, where he was involved in with honors, in electronic engineering from the
the design of fully integrated low-power transceivers University of Catania, Catania, Italy, in 1996.
(100 kHz–450 MHz frequency range) for short-range data links in BiCMOS In 1997, he joined STMicroelectronics, Catania,
and CMOS technology. Since 1998 he has been with the TPA Technology Italy, as RF IC Designer. His activities are concerned
Center of STMicroelectronics, Catania, Italy, as a Senior RF Designer working with the design of several blocks such as LNA,
on IF circuits for mobile terminals in BiCMOS technology. He is currently mixers, modulators, VGA, VCO, and PPA for RF
involved in the design of low-power fully integrated GPS receivers in deep sub transceivers in the 900–2500 MHz band. Currently,
micron CMOS technology. He holds one patent and has authored/coauthored he is responsible for the design of a receiver for
several publications. satellite and terrestrial radio applications.

Authorized licensed use limited to: NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY CALICUT. Downloaded on February 26, 2009 at 23:04 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
MONTAGNA et al.: FULLY INTEGRATED CMOS GPS RADIO 1171

Mario Paparo (M’92) was born in Randazzo, Rinaldo Castello (S’78–M’78–SM’92–F’99) was
Catania, Italy in February, 1952. He received the born in Genova, Italy, in 1953. He graduated in
Laurea in electronics engineering (telecommunica- electronics engineering from the University of
tion) from the University of Turin, Turin, Italy, in Genova, Genova, Italy, in 1977. He received the
1975. M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of
He has been with SGS, Milan, Italy, and later California, Berkeley, in 1981 and 1984, respectively.
with STMicroelectronics, Catania, Italy, since 1977 From 1983 to 1985, he was a Visiting Assistant
taking various responsibilities in analog/digital full Professor in the Electronics Department, University
custom ICs design. From 1982 to 1985, he worked of California, Berkeley. In 1987, he joined the De-
with Grafing SGS Design Center for Automotive/In- partment of Electronics, University of Pavia, Pavia,
dustrial full custom ASIC, Munich, Germany. From Italy, as an Associate Professor. He also acts as a Con-
1986 to 1991, he led the Company’s Development Group for Vertical Intelligent sultant to STMicroelectronics, Milan, Italy. His research activities are in the
Smart Power-VIPower, Catania, Italy, focused on high current/high voltage field of integrated circuits for analog/digital interfaces, mainly oriented toward
actuators. From 1991 to 1994, he was the Design Manager of the Automotive telecom applications.
Livonia SGS-THOMSON Design Center, Detroit, MI, mostly involved in the Dr. Castello has been a member of the technical committees of the European
development of ASIC in CMOS/BCD’s technologies for engine management Solid State Circuit Conference (ESSCIRC) since 1987, the International Solid
and car radio applications. Since 1994, he has been coordinating the design and State Circuit Conference (ISSCC) since 1992, and was Technical Chairman
development activities on dedicated ICs for industrial, wireless devices power of ESSCIRC’91. He was Guest Editor of the July 1992 special issue of the
management, and RF innovative MMICs in mixed high frequency technologies IEEE JOURNAL OF SOLID-STATE CIRCUITS and Associate Editor for Europe since
(Bipolar, CMOS, BiMOS, Si-Ge) at the STMicroelectonics Technology Center, 1993.
Catania, Italy. He holds 15 patents on mixed mode, analog and smart power
integrated circuits and devices. He is also the author or coauthor of several
papers on analog, smart power, and radio-frequency integrated circuit design
and application.

Authorized licensed use limited to: NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY CALICUT. Downloaded on February 26, 2009 at 23:04 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.

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