Design and Analysis of an 8 mW, 1 GHz Span, Passive Spectrum Scanner With >+31 dBm Out-of-Band IIP3 Using Periodically Time-Varying Circuit Components

This paper presents a low power and highly linear passive spectrum scanner based on the filtering by aliasing principle. The scanner utilizes a linear periodically time-varying circuit followed by a sampler to achieve sharp apparent filters from a continuous-time input to a discrete-time output. This paper describes the design of the scanner and provides an analysis of the expected and measured performance in the presence of circuit non-idealities. The scanner enables a DC -1 GHz spectrum scan while consuming 8 mW of power, with an out-of-band IIP3 that is better than +31 dBm across the band.