Patent ID: 7505750

Claim:
An integrated circuit radio transceiver, comprising: a baseband processor for processing ingoing and outgoing digital signals; a radio front end for receiving RF and for producing the ingoing digital signals to the baseband processor and for receiving the outgoing digital signals from the baseband processor and producing outgoing RF; the radio front end further including a mixer block operable to down-convert from RF or up-convert to RF based upon whether the radio front end is processing ingoing RF or outgoing RF, respectively; wherein the mixer block further includes: linearization circuitry operable to receive an input voltage signal comprising one of the ingoing RF or outgoing continuous waveform signals and to produce a linearized input current signal based upon one of the ingoing RF or the outgoing continuous waveform signals, the linearization circuitry comprising a signal path that includes a plurality of MOSFET transistors operably disposed therein to provide a headroom voltage that is substantially equal to a supply voltage minus a sum of one gate-to-source voltage (Vgs) voltage drop and two saturation voltage (Vdsat) voltage drops; current mirror circuitry operable to produce an amplified current based upon the linearized input current signal; mixer circuitry operable to mix the amplified current with a local oscillation to produce a mixer output signal comprising one of downconverted ingoing continuous waveform signals or upconverted RF signals; and conversion circuitry operably disposed to produce the outgoing continuous waveform signals based upon the outgoing digital signals produced by the baseband processor and to produce ingoing digital signals based upon the ingoing continuous waveform signals.