What is the advanteges of Direct Sampling Mixer ?

[pancho_hideboo]

Hi.

http://honyaku.yahoofs.jp/url_resul...48bc1272acca74404cd6b3290b24,t20080404120247,

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Original News
http://panasonic.co.jp/corp/news/official.data/data.dir/jn080326-1/jn080326-1.html

Recently Panasonic announced a development of one-segment DTV tuner IC using DSM(Direct Sampling Mixer) technology.
This IC uses 65nm CMOS process and its operation voltage of analog(RF) bolck is 1.25Volt.

Although a first stage decimation filter is Sinc filter(moving average filter) in a DSM of Texas Instruments BRF6150 Bluetooth IC(130nm CMOS),
DSM of panasonic uses more generic filter as decimation filter.
Panasonic's first stage decimation filter is a serial-parallel decomposition structure of high order transfer function to realize more sharp attenuation than Sinc filter, I think.

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Requirements for NF and distortion are very severe in DTV tuner IC.
I can understand DSM is suitable in low supply voltage operation.
But I don't think DSM is very advantageous in regarding a tradeoff between NF and distortion characteristics.

Here I want to raise some discussions about merit and demerit of DSM technology.

(1) DSM is advantageous in NF ?
(2) DSM is advantageous in distortion ?
(3) Bandlimiting by multistage decimation filtering of DSM is best fit in DTV application ?
(4) DSM is advantageous in current consumption ?
(5) DSM is advantageous in low supply voltage ?
(6) DSM is fit for standard CMOS process ?

Any logical, interesting or amusing opinion is welcome :