A linear ultra wide band low noise amplifier using pre-distortion technique

This paper presents an Ultra Wide-Band (UWB) high linear low noise amplifier. The linearity of Common Gate (CG) structure is improved based on pre-distortion technique. An auxiliary transistor is used at the input to sink the nonlinear terms of source current, resulting linearity improvement. Furthermore, an inductor is used in the gate of the main amplifying transistor, which efficiently improves gain, input matching and noise performance at higher frequencies. Detailed mathematical analysis show the effectiveness of both linearity improvement and bandwidth extension techniques. Post-layout simulation results of the proposed LNA in TSMC 0.18 µm RF-CMOS process show a gain of 13.7 dB with −3 dB bandwidth of 0.8–10.4 GHz and minimum noise figure (NF) of 3 dB. Input Third Intercept Point (IIP3) of 10.3–13 dBm is achieved which shows 8 dB improvement compared to conventional common gate structure. The core circuit occupies an area of 0.19 mm² including bond pads, while consuming 4 mA from a 1.8-V supply.     

Design of low power UWB LNA based on common source topology with current-reused technique

This paper presents two low power UWB LNAs with common source topology. The power reduction is achieved by the current-reused technique. The gain and noise enhancement of the proposed circuit is based on an output buffer which is used by a common source amplifier with shunt–shunt feedback. Chip1 is an adopted T-match input network of 50 Ω matching in the required band. Measurements show that the S₁₁ and S₂₂ are less than −10 dB, and the maximum amplifier gain S₂₁ gives 9.7 dB, and the noise figure is 4.2 dB, the IIP3 is −8.5 dBm, and the power consumption is 11 mW from 1.1 V supply voltage. The input matching of chip2 is adopted from a LC high pass filter and source degenerated inductor. The output buffer with the RC-feedback topology can improve the gain, increase the IIP3, restrain the noise, improve the noise figure and decrease the DC power dissipation. Measurements show 13.2 dB of power gain, 3.33 dB of noise figure, and the IIP3 is −3.3 dBm. It consumes 9.3 mW from 1.5 V supply voltage. These two chips are implemented in a 0.18 μm TSMC CMOS process.     

Sub-mA single ended CMOS low noise amplifier with 2.41 dB noise figure

This paper presents a single ended low noise amplifier (LNA) using 0.18 μm CMOS process packed and tested on a printed circuit board. The LNA is powered at 1.0 V supply and drains 0.95 mA only. The LNA provides a forward gain of 11.91 dB with a noise figure of only 2.41 dB operating in the 0.9 GHz band. The measured value of IIP3 is 0.7 dBm and of P1dB is −12 dBm. Zhang Liang is currently with Cyrips, Singapore. Ram Singh Rana was born in Delhi (India). Having primary education in Bijepur, Dwarahat(India), he received the B.Tech. (hons.) degree in Computer Engineering from G.B. Pant University, Pantnagar, India in 1988 and the Ph.D degree from the Indian Institute of Techonology (IIT), Delhi, India in 1996. He worked for his Ph.D in the Centre for Applied Research in Electronics, IIT Delhi in close interaction with the Semiconductor Complex Limited, Mohali, India. He was with ESPL, Mohali(India) in 1988 for a very short period and then served IIT Delhi as Senior Research Associate (88-90) and Senior Scientific Officer (90-95) where his main contributions were on CMOS analog IC design in subthreshold operation. He was a Lecturer in the Kumaon Engg. College, Dwarahat (India) before serving the IIT Roorkee (Formerly Univ. of Roorkee) in 1998 as assistant Professor. In 1999, he was a Manager (Engineering), Semiconductor Product Sector of the Motorola, Noida, India. Since joining the Institute of Microelectronics, Singapore in 2000, he worked mostly on RFICs, Fractional-N PLLs, ADCs. During 2001-2004, he worked there as IC Design Research and Training Program Manager. Currently, he is serving the institute as Senior Research Engineer in CMOS IC design (below 1V) for biomedical and bio-sensors. His current interests include design and consultancy for CMOS ICs/systems for the biomedical and high speed communication applications. Dr. Rana received Young Teacher Career Award from the All India Council for Technical Education in 1997. He was an Adjunct Asstt. Professor with the National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore in 2004. He is sole inventor of two US granted patents and has filed several other patents. He has authored/co-authored about 40 publications. He has been reviewer for several IEEE journals and conference papers. Dr Rana is a senior member of IEEE and a member of Graduate Program in BioEngineering, NUS Singapore. He has chaired /co-chaired sessions in many international conferences. Zhang Liang was born in China in June 1978. He received the Bachelor degree and the Master degree in Electrical Engineering from the Xi’an JiaoTong University, Xi’an, China, in 2000 and 2003 respectively. Since 2003, he has been a postgraduate student in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department, National University of Singapore(NUS), Singapore and has successfully completed M.Engg degree program of the NUS. He is currently working on RFICs as a design engineer in Cyrips, Singapore. His design and research interests include integrated circuit design for communications. He has authored/co-authored several publications of international standard. Hari K Garg obtained his BTech degree in EE from IITDelhi in 1981. Subsequently, he obtained his MEng & PhD degrees from Concordia University in 1983 & 1985, and MBA from Syracuse University in 1985. He was a faculty member at Syracuse University from 1985 till 1995. He has been with the National University of Singapore since 1995 till present with the exception of 1998-1999 when he was with Philips. Hari’s research interests are in the area of digital signal/image processing, wireless communications, coding theory and digital watermarking. He has published extensively on these and related topics. He is also founder of several companies in the space of mobile telephony. In his spare time, Hari enjoys singing and a good game of Squash.     

Design of 3.1–10.6 GHz ultra-wideband CMOS low noise amplifier with current reuse technique

A new low complexity ultra-wideband 3.1–10.6 GHz low noise amplifier (LNA), designed in a chartered 0.18 μm RFCMOS technology, is presented in this paper. The ultra-wideband LNA only consists of two simple amplifiers with an inter-stage inductor connected. The first stage utilizing a resistive current reuse and dual inductive degeneration techniques is used to attain a wideband input matching and low noise figure. A common source amplifier with inductive peaking technique as the second stage achieves high flat gain and wide the −3 dB bandwidth of the overall amplifier simultaneously. The implemented ultra-wideband LNA presents a maximum power gain of 15.6 dB, a high reverse isolation of −45 dB and a good input/output return losses are better than −10 dB in the frequency range of 3.1–10.6 GHz. An excellent noise figure (NF) of 2.8–4.7 dB was obtained in the required band with a power dissipation of 14.1 mW under a supply voltage of 1.5 V. An input-referred third-order intercept point (IIP3) is −7.1 dBm at 6 GHz. The chip area including testing pads is only 0.8 mm × 0.9 mm.     

一种新型900MHz CMOS低噪声放大器的设计

对两种低噪声放大器(LNA)的构架进行了比较,详细推导了共源LNA的噪声系数与输入晶体管栅宽的关系及优化方法,设计了一种采用0.6 μ m标准CMOS工艺,工作于900MHz的新型差分低噪声放大器.在900MHz时,噪声系数为1.5 dB的情况下可提供22.5 dB的功率增益,-3dB带宽为1 50MHz,S11达到-38dB,消耗的电流为5mA.     

0.18-um CMOS 3.1-10．6GHz超宽带低噪声放大器设计

介绍了一种基于0．18-um CMOS工艺、适用于超宽带无线通信系统接收前端的低噪声放大器。在3．1～10．6GHz的频带范围内对它仿真获得如下结果：最高增益12dB；增益波动小于2dB；输入端口反射系数S11小于-10dB；输出端口反射系数S22小于-15dB；噪声系数NF小于4．6dB。采用1．5V电源供电，功耗为10．5mW。与近期公开发表的超宽带低噪声放大器仿真结果相比较，本电路结构具有工作带宽大、功耗低、输入匹配电路简单的优点。     

A SiGe LC-ladder low noise amplifier with base resistance match,gain and noise flatness for UWB applications

This study presents a 3.1–10.6 GHz ultra-wideband low noise amplifier (UWB LNA) in 0.18 µm SiGe HBT technology. To achieve a good input match, parasitic base resistance in a bipolar transistor and an LC-ladder filter are included into calculations with the common-emitter topology using shunt–shunt capacitive feedback. Both high and flat power gain (S₂₁) and low and flat noise figure (NF) are achieved by adjusting the pole and zero in amplifying stage and quality factors of the fourth-order input network. Design equations for performances such as gain, noise figure and linearity IIP3 are derived especially on gain flatness and noise flatness. LNA dissipates 33 mW power and achieves S₂₁ of 20.65+0.7 dB, NF of 2.79+0.2 dB over the band of 3.1–10.6 GHz. The simulated input third-order intermodulation point (IIP3) is −17 dBm at 10 GHz.     

低功耗宽带CMOS低噪声放大器

本文实现了一款低功耗的宽带低噪声放大器(LNA)。该低噪放由输入级、中间级和输出级组成。由于每一级都采用了电流复用技术,显著地降低了功耗。输入级通过电阻、电容负反馈和并联电感,实现了良好的输入匹配。引入电感抵消了电容产生的虚部阻抗并且抵消了电容产生的极点。与电阻负反馈放大器相比,本文提出的结构提高了增益。中间级通过并联电感引入零点,采用低Q值拓展带宽。输出级是源级跟随器,提供了良好的输出匹配。经0.18 μm TSMC CMOS工艺仿真验证,在3 V的电源电压下,功耗仅为4.89 mW。另外在1~4.5 GHz频带范围内,电压增益(S21)为14.8±0.4 dB,噪声系数(NF)介于3.1~4.2 dB之间,输入、输出反射系数(S11、S22)均小于-10 dB。在4GHz时,输入三阶交调点(IIP3)达到-11dBm。     

CMOS planar spiral inductor modeling and low noise amplifier design

During this study, various narrowband single-ended inductive source degenerated Low Noise Amplifiers (LNAs) for GSM and S-band low earth orbit (LEO) space applications have been designed, simulated and compared using Mietec CMOS 0.7 μm process and the Cadence/BSIM3v3. To get more realistic results, parasitic effects due to layout have been calculated and added to the simulations. Also, considering the inductive source degenerative topology, most of the attention is given on the modeling of planar spiral inductor by lumped element circuits. Moreover to decrease the substrate effects, the inductors have been surrounded by grounded guard rings and have patterned ground shield (PGS) under them. The simulation results of LNA including the parasitic effects indicate a forward gain of 9 dB with noise figure of 4.5 dB while drawing 18 mW from+3 V supply at 2210 MHz. The area occupied is 1.8 mm×1.6 mm with pads, 1.3 mm×1.2 mm without pads.     

A CMOS low noise amplifier with integrated front-side micromachined inductor

The paper presents the design and characterization of a low noise amplifier (LNA) in a 0.18 μm CMOS process with a novel micromachined integrated stacked inductor. The inductor is released from the silicon substrate by a low-cost CMOS compatible dry front-side micromachining process that enables higher inductor quality factor and self-resonance frequency. The post-processed micromachined inductor is used in the matching network of a single stage cascode 4 GHz LNA to improve its RF performance. This study compares performance of the fabricated LNA prior to and after post-processing of the inductor. The measurement results show a 0.5 dB improvement in the minimum noise figure and a 1 dB increase in gain, while good input matching is maintained. These results show that the novel low-cost CMOS compatible front-side dry micromachining process reported here significantly improves performance and is very promising for System-On-Chip (SOC) applications.     

具有30dB增益和1-16GHz带宽的CMOS低噪声中频放大器

This paper presents a high-gain wideband low-noise IF amplifier aimed for the ALMA front end system using 90-nm LP CMOS technology.A topology of three optimized cascading stages is proposed to achieve a flat and wideband gain.Incorporating an input inductor and a gate-inductive gain-peaking inductor,the active shunt feedback technique is employed to extend the matching bandwidth and optimize the noise figure.The circuit achieves a flat gain of 30.5 dB with 3 dB bandwidth of 1-16 GHz and a minimum noise figure of 3.76 dB.Under 1.2 V supply voltage,the proposed IF amplifier consumes 42 mW DC power.The chip die including pads takes up 0.53 mm~2,while the active area is only 0.022 mm~2.     

运用级间并联电感的级联CMOS低噪声放大器的优化设计

本文介绍了一种运用级间并联电感优化CMOS低噪声放大器的设计方法。传统的级联低噪声放大器可以从两级级联放大器的角度出发,视为共源级和共栅级的级联,由于共栅极的极好的隔离性,两级放大器可以分别设计。理论分析表明：在共源极和共栅极间引入级间匹配网络,即并联一个电感加强两极间的耦合,可以有效的改善低噪放的功率增益和噪声性能。文章最后用一个工作于5GHz的低噪放的设计实例,验证了理论分析的正确性。     

A highly linear CMOS low noise amplifier for K-band applications

This paper describes a highly linear low noise amplifier (LNA) for K-band applications in a 0.18 µm RF CMOS technology. The core of the circuit is a two-stage LNA consisting of a common-source and a cascode stage. By adopting an improved post-linearisation technique at the common-source transistor of the second stage, more than 5 dB improvement in IIP3 is achieved with a minor effect on noise figure and input matching. The circuit level analysis and simulation results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed technique.     

适合于多吉赫兹应用的0.5 V CMOS cascode低噪声放大器设计

本文介绍了适用于低功耗无线通信的0.5 V 多吉赫兹CMOS cascode 低噪声放大器设计。通过对传统cascode结构进行直流分离,去除了因堆积MOS管导致的工作电压限制。同时,采用正向体偏置技术,cascode结构低噪声放大器能工作在0.5 V供电电压。文章研究了电路设计细节和射频性能。为验证研究结果,采用台积电0.18微米射频工艺的0.5 V 5.4吉赫兹低噪声放大器被设计,制造出来并进行了测量。测量结果表明,该低噪声放大器在0.5 V工作电压下工作电流为5毫安,其增益为9.1分贝,噪声系数为3分贝,输入三阶交调点为-3.5 分贝毫瓦。通过和那些已发表的cascode低噪声放大器比较,本文的低噪声放大器具有工作电压低,功耗低而射频性能相当的特点。     

Analysis and optimization of the impact of channel resistance on CMOS LNA noise performance

The intrinsic channel resistance, which is caused by the finite charging time of the carriers in the inversion layer, has remarkable impact on RF CMOS circuits, especially low noise amplifier (LNA), the first block of receiver. The impact of channel resistance on the noise performance of LNA is thoroughly studied and analyzed in this paper, and then new formulae are proposed systematically. Moreover, revised noise figure optimization technique is presented. All of this work will be very instructive for the design of high performance LNA.     

A new CMOS wideband low noise amplifier with gain control

In this paper, a new CMOS wideband low noise amplifier (LNA) is proposed that is operated within a range of 470 MHz-3 GHz with current reuse, mirror bias and a source inductive degeneration technique. A two-stage topology is adopted to implement the LNA based on the TSMC 0.18-μm RF CMOS process. Traditional wideband LNAs suffer from a fundamental trade-off in noise figure (NF), gain and source impedance matching. Therefore, we propose a new LNA which obtains good NF and gain flatness performance by integrating two kinds of wideband matching techniques and a two-stage topology. The new LNA can also achieve a tunable gain at different power consumption conditions. The measurement results at the maximum power consumption mode show that the gain is between 11.3 and 13.6 dB, the NF is less than 2.5 dB, and the third-order intercept point (IIP3) is about −3.5 dBm. The LNA consumes maximum power at about 27 mW with a 1.8 V power supply. The core area is 0.55×0.95 mm².     

A 2.4-GHz low power dual gain low noise amplifier for ZigBee

e figure (NF) is 2.3-3 dB in the whole 2.45-GHz ISM band. The measured 1-dB compression point, IIP3 and IIP2 is -9, 1 and 33 dBm, respectively. The DGLNA consumes 2 mA of current from a 1.8 V power supply.