Sampling architectures

In modern communication, sensor and signal processing systems digitization methods are gaining importance. They allow for building software configurable systems and provide better stability and reproducibility. The quest for new architectures in radio frequency front-ends is a clear consequence of the ever increasing number of different standards and the resulting task to provide a platform which covers as many standards as possible. The first part of this paper reviews multiband capable receiver architectures. These are limited to a few GHz yet. The second part proposes a novel architecture, which is capable of direct sampling of band-limited signals at frequencies beyond 10 GHz by means of an under-sampling technique.