A linear Σ-Δ digital IF to RF DAC transmitter with embedded mixer

A noise-shaped direct digital IF to RF (DIF2RF) DAC with embedded upconverter mixer is presented. The digital IF signal is noise shaped by a bandpass Sigma-Delta modulator with 1-bit IF output followed by a semidigital finite impulse response (FIR) filter. The current mode FIR filter combines scaled values of the local oscillator (LO) signal for performing reconstruction filtering and upconversion in a single module. The DIF2RF design modulates the digital IF signal with a digital LO signal. This topology eliminates the transconductance nonlinearity of conventional mixers and is inherently linear due to single-bit digital IF input. The presented architecture reduces clock jitter sensitivity of I-bit DACs by masking IF clock transitions with LO signals. A prototype of the DIF2RF DAC is designed and fabricated in a five-layer metal 0.25-mu m digital CMOS process. The architecture can be used in low-power software-defined digital-IF transmitters. The DIF2RF DAC consumes 49 mA from a 2.5-V supply, achieving -64.7-dBc third-order intermodulation at 1.03 GHz with a spurious-free dynamic range of 72 dB in a 15-MHz bandwidth.