A 0.18μm CMOS low noise amplifier using a current reuse technique for 3.1-10.6 GHz UWB receivers

A new,low complexity,ultra-wideband 3.1-10.6 GHz low noise amplifier(LNA),designed in a chartered 0.18μm RFCMOS technology,is presented.The ultra-wideband LNA consists of only two simple amplifiers with an inter-stage inductor connected.The first stage utilizing a resistive current reuse and dual inductive degeneration technique is used to attain a wideband input matching and low noise figure.A common source amplifier with an inductive peaking technique as the second stage achieves high flat gain and wide -3 dB bandwidth of the overall amplifier simultaneously.The implemented ultra-wideband LNA presents a maximum power gain of 15.6 dB,and a high reverse isolation of—45 dB,and 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 0.8×0.9 mm2.     

Radio Frequency Low Noise Amplifier with Linearizing Bias Circuit

A 1.34 GHz-1=60 MHz low noise amplifier （LNA） designed in a 0.35 pm SiGe process is presented. The designed LNA exhibits a power gain of 21.46 dB and a noise figure （NF） of 1.27 dB at 1.34 GHz. The linearity is improved with an active biasing technique. The post-layout simulation shows an input referred 1-dB compression point （IPldn） of-11.52 dBm. Compared with the recent reported high gain LNAs, the proposed LNA has a much better linearity without degrading other performance. The LNA draws 10 mA current from a 3.3 V power supply.     

A 5 GHz 7.2 dB NF low power direct conversion receiver front-end with balun LNA

A 5GHz low power direct conversion receiver radio frequency front-end with balun LNA is presented. A hybrid common gate and common source structure balun LNA is adopted,and the capacitive cross-coupling technique is used to reduce the noise contribution of the common source transistor.To obtain low l/f noise and high linearity,a current mode passive mixer is preferred and realized.A current mode switching scheme can switch between high and low gain modes,and meanwhile it can not only perform good linearity but save power consumption at low gain mode.The front-end chip is manufactured on a 0.13-μm CMOS process and occupies an active chip area of 1.2 mm~2.It achieves 35 dB conversion gain across 4.9-5.1 GHz,a noise figure of 7.2 dB and an IIP3 of -16.8 dBm,while consuming 28.4 mA from a 1.2 V power supply at high gain mode.Its conversion gain is 13 dB with an IIP3 of 5.2 dBm and consumes 21.5 mA at low gain mode.     

Low power high gain gain-controlled LNA and mixer for GNSS receivers Wei Binbin(魏斌斌)1, Jiang Jinguang(江金光)1,2,3*

A low power high gain gain-controlled LNA ＋ mixer for GNSS receivers is reported. The high gain LNA is realized with a current source load. Its gain-controlled ability is achieved using a programmable bias circuit. Taking advantage of the high gain LNA, a high noise figure passive mixer is adopted. With the passive mixer, low power consumption and high voltage gain of the LNA ＋ mixer are achieved. To fully investigate the performance of this circuit, comparisons between a conventional LNA ＋ mixer, a previous low power LNA ＋ mixer, and the proposed LNA ＋ mixer are presented. The circuit is implemented in 0.18 #m mixed-signal CMOS technology. A 3.8 dB noise figure, an overall 45 dB converge gain and a 10 dB controlled gain range of the two stages are measured. The chip occupies 0.24 mm2 and consumes 2 mA current under 1.8 V supply.     

Design of on-chip 15-18 GHz ultra low noise amplifier

With rapid development communication system, high signal to noise ratio （SNR） system is required. In high frequency bandwidth, high loss, low Q inductors and high noise figure is a significant challenge with on-chip monolithic microwave integrated circuits （MMICs）. To overcome this problem, high Q, low loss transmission line characteristics was analyzed. Compared with the same inductor value of the lumped component and the transmission line, it has a higher Q value and lower loss performance in high frequency, and a 2-stage common-source low noise amplifier （LNA） was presented, which employs source inductor feedback technology and high Q low loss transmission line matching network technique with over 17.6 dB small signal gain and 1.1 dB noise figure in 15 GHz-18 GHz. The LNA was fabricated by WIN semiconductors company 0.15 μm gallium arsenide （GaAs） P high electron mobility transistor （P-HEMT） process. The total Current is 15 mA, while the DC power consumption is only 45 mW.     

采用balun低噪声放大器的5GHz 7.2-dB NF低功耗直接转换接收机前端电路

A 5GHz low power direct conversion receiver radio frequency front-end with balun LNA is presented. A hybrid common gate and common source structure balun LNA is adopted, and the capacitive cross-coupling technique is used to reduce the noise contribution of the common source transistor. To obtain low 1/f noise and high linearity, a current mode passive mixer is preferred and realized. A current mode switching scheme can switch between high and low gain modes, and meanwhile it can not only perform good linearity but save power consumption at low gain mode. The front-end chip is manufactured on a 0.13-μm CMOS process and occupies an active chip area of 1.2 mm². It achieves 35 dB conversion gain across 4.9-5.1 GHz, a noise figure of 7.2 dB and an IIP3 of -16.8 dBm, while consuming 28.4 mA from a 1.2 V power supply at high gain mode. Its conversion gain is 13 dB with an IIP3 of 5.2 dBm and consumes 21.5 mA at low gain mode.     

Low power LNA using the MOSFETs in moderate inversion

This paper presents an integrated complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) low power low noise amplifier (LNA) for global positioning system (GPS) receivers.To achieve low power dissipation,the MOS transistors in the proposed LNA are biased in moderate inversion region.It is implemented by SMIC 180 nm 1P6M CMOS process.The experiment results show that a gain of 12.14 dB@1.57 GHz is achieved with low noise figure (NF) of 1.62 dB.The power consumption of the circuit is 1.5 mW at supply voltage of 1.8 V.The ratio of gain to dc power consumption is 8 dB/mW.The size of the LNA is only 980μm× 720μm including the pads.     

Performance analysis of a low power low noise tunable band pass filter for multiband RF front end

This paper presents a low power tunable active inductor and RF band pass filter suitable for multiband RF front end circuits. The active inductor circuit uses the PMOS cascode structure as the negative transconductor of a gyrator to reduce the noise voltage. Also, this structure provides possible negative resistance to reduce the inductor loss with wide inductive bandwidth and high resonance frequency. The RF band pass filter is realized using the proposed active inductor with suitable input and output buffer stages. The tuning of the center frequency for multiband operation is achieved through the controllable current source. The designed active inductor and RF band pass filter are simulated in 180 nm and 45 nm CMOS process using the Synopsys HSPICE simulation tool and their performances are compared. The parameters, such as resonance frequency, tuning capability, noise and power dissipation, are analyzed for these CMOS technologies and discussed. The design of a third order band pass filter using an active inductor is also presented.     

Design and optimization of CMOS LNA with ESD protection for 2.4 GHz WSN application

A new optimization method of a source inductive degenerated low noise amplifier(LNA) with electrostatic discharge protection is proposed.It can achieve power-constrained simultaneous noise and input matching. An analysis of the input impedance and the noise parameters is also given.Based on the developed method,a 2.4 GHz LNA for wireless sensor network application is designed and optimized using 0.18-μm RF CMOS technology. The measured results show that the LNA achieves a noise figure of 1.59 dB,a power gain of 14.12 dB, an input 1 dB compression point of-8 dBm and an input third-order intercept point of 1 dBm.The DC current is 4 mA under a supply of 1.8 V.     

Research on optimizing the noise figure of low noise amplifier method via bias and frequency

In this paper,we present the design of an integrated low noise amplifier(LNA)for wireless local area network(WLAN)applications in the 5.15-5.825 GHz range using a SiGe BiCMOS technology.A novel method that can determine both the optimum bias point and the frequency point for achieving the minimum noise figure is put forward.The method can be used to determine the optimum impedance over a relevant wider operating frequency range.The results show that this kind of optimizing method is more suitable for the WLAN circuits design.The LNA gain is optimized and the noise figure(NF)is reduced.This method can also achieve the noise match and power match simultaneously.This proposal is applied on designing a LNA for IEEE 802.11a WLAN.The LNA exhibits a power gain large than 16 dB from 5.15 to 5.825 GHz range.The noise figure is lower than 2 dB.The OIP3 is 8 dBm.Also the LNA is matched to 50 Ω input impedance with 6 mA DC current for differential design.     

用于ZigBee的2.4GHz低功耗双增益低噪声放大器

This paper presents a fully differential dual gain low noise amplifier（DGLNA） for low power 2.45-GHz ZigBee/IEEE 802.15.4 applications.The effect of input parasitics on the inductively degenerated cascode LNA is analyzed.Circuit design details within the guidelines of the analysis are presented.The chip was implemented in SMIC 0.18-μm 1P6M RF/mixed signal CMOS process.The DGLNA achieves a maximum gain of 8 dB and a minimum gain of 1 dB with good input return loss.In high gain mode, the measured noise 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.     

一种应用于频率综合器的全差分电荷泵的设计与噪声分析

A fully-differential charge pump（FDCP）with perfect current matching and low output current noise is realized for phase-locked loops（PLLs）.An easily stable common-mode feedback（CMFB）circuit which can handle high input voltage swing is proposed.Current mismatch and current noise contribution from the CMFB circuit is minimized.In order to optimize PLL phase noise,the output current noise of the FDCP is analyzed in detail and calculated with the sampling principle.The calculation result agrees well with the simulation.Based on the noise analysis,many methods to lower output current noise of the FDCP are discussed.The fully-differential charge pump is integrated into a 1–2 GHz frequency synthesizer and fabricated in an SMIC CMOS 0.18μm process.The measured output reference spur is–64 dBc to–69 dBc.The in-band and out-band phase noise is–95 dBc/Hz at 3 kHz frequency offset and–123 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz frequency offset respectively.     

一种基于环形振荡器的双环路锁相环

A dual-loop phase-locked loop（PLL）for wideband operation is proposed.The dual-loop architecture combines a coarse-tuning loop with a fine-tuning one,enabling a wide tuning range and low voltage-controlled oscillator（VCO）gain without poisoning phase noise and reference spur suppression performance.An analysis of the phase noise and reference spur of the dual-loop PLL is emphasized.A novel multiple-pass ring VCO is designed for the dual-loop application.It utilizes both voltage-control and current-control simultaneously in the delay cell. The PLL is fabricated in Jazz 0.18-μm RF CMOS technology.The measured tuning range is from 4.2 to 5.9 GHz.It achieves a low phase noise of–99 dBc/Hz@1 MHz offset from a 5.5 GHz carrier.     

应用于低中频和零中频DVB调谐器中8阶信道滤波器设计

An eighth order active-RC filter for low-IF and zero-IF DVB tuner applications is presented, which is implemented in Butterworth biquad structure. An automatic frequency tuning circuit is introduced to compensate the cut-off frequency variation using a 6-bit switched-capacitor array. Switched-resistor arrays are adopted to cover different cut-off frequencies in low-IF and zero-IF modes. Measurement results show that precise cut-off frequencies at 2.5, 3, 3.5 and 4 MHz in zero-IF mode, 5, 6, 7 and 8 MHz in low-IF mode can be achieved, 60 dB frequency attenuation can be obtained at 20 MHz, and the in-band group delay agrees well with the simulation. Two-tone testing shows the in-band IM3 achieves -52 dB and the out-band IM3 achieves -55 dB with -11 dBm input power. This proposed filter circuit, fabricated in a SMIC 0.18μm CMOS process, consumes 4 mA current with 1.8 V power supply.     

53-GHz平衡式考毕兹振荡器的设计与测试

A 53 GHz Colpitts oscillator implemented in a SiGe：C BiCMOS technology is presented. Limited by a 26.5 GHz frequency analyzer, the oscillator was measured indirectly through an on-chip mixer. The mixer downconverted the oscillating frequency to an intermediate frequency （IF） below 26.5 GHz. By adjusting the local oscillating （LO） frequency and recording the changes of IF frequency, the oscillator＇s output frequency （RF） was determined. Additionally, using phase noise theory of mixers, the oscillator＇s phase noise was estimated as -58 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset and the output power was about -21 dBm. The chip is 270 ×480μm in size.     

A 3.1-4.8 GHz CMOS receiver for MB-OFDM UWB

An integrated fully differential ultra-wideband CMOS receiver for 3.1-4.8 GHz MB-OFDM systems is presented. A gain controllable low noise amplifier and a merged quadrature mixer are integrated as the RF front-end. Five order Gm-C type low pass filters and VGAs are also integrated for both I and Q IF paths in the receiver. The ESD protected chip is fabricated in a Jazz 0.18μm RF CMOS process and achieves a maximum total voltage gain of 65 dB, an AGC range of 45 dB with about 6 dB/step, an averaged total noise figure of 6.4 to 8.8 dB over 3 bands and an in-band IIP3 of-5.1 dBm. The receiver occupies 2.3 mm2 and consumes 110 mA from a 1.8 V supply including test buffers and a digital module.     

A 4.2-5 GHz,low phase noise LC-VCO with constant bandwidth and small tuning gain

As the tuning frequency of an integrated LC-voltage controlled oscillator （LC-VCO） increases, it is difficult to co-design the active negative resistance core and the varactor to achieve wideband frequency range, low phase noise, constant bandwidth and small tuning gain together. The presented VCO solves the problem by designing a set of changeable varactor units. The whole VCO was implemented in a 0.18μm CMOS process. The measured result shows -120 dBc/Hz phase noise at 1 MHz offset. The measured tuning range is from 4.2 to 5 GHz and the tuning gain is 8-10 MHz/V. The VCO draws 4 mA from a 1.5 V supply voltage.     

电流模线性控制电荷泵的研究与设计

To meet the demands for a number of LEDs,a novel charge pump circuit with current mode control is proposed.Regulation is achieved by operating the current mirrors and the output current of the operational transconductance amplifier.In the steady state,the input current from power voltage retains constant,so reducing the noise induced on the input voltage source and improving the output voltage ripple.The charge pump small-signal model is used to describe the device’s dynamic behavior and stability.Analytical predictions were verified by Hspice simulation and testing.Load driving is up to 800 mA with a power voltage of 3.6 V,and the output voltage ripple is less than 45 mV.The output response time is less than 8μs,and the load current jumps from 400 to 800 mA.     

Annealing before gate metal deposition related noise performance in AIGaN/GaN HEMTs

For a further improvement of the noise performance in A1GaN/GaN HEMTs, reducing the relatively high gate leakage current is a key issue. In this paper, an experiment was carried out to demonstrate that one method during the device fabrication process can lower the noise. Two samples were treated differently after gate recess etching： one sample was annealed before metal deposition and the other sample was left as it is. From a comparison of their Ig-Vg characteristics, a conclusion could be drawn that the annealing can effectively reduce the gate leakage current. The etching plasma-induced damage removal or reduction after annealing is considered to be the main factor responsible for it. Evidence is given to prove that annealing can increase the Schottky barrier height. A noise model was used to verify that the annealing of the gate recess before the metal deposition is really effective to improve the noise performance of AIGaN/GaN HEMTs.     

Software Radio——Software Radio： A Review of Design Considerations and Digital Hardware Choices

This paper reviews the requirements for Software Defined Radio （SDR） systems for high-speed wireless applications and compares how well the different technology choices available- from ASICs, FPGAs to digital signal processors （DSPs） and general purpose processors （GPPs） - meet them.