A Low-Power Full-Band Low-Noise Amplifier for Ultra-Wideband Receivers

In this paper, a low-power full-band low-noise amplifier (FB-LNA) for ultra-wideband applications is presented. The proposed FB-LNA uses a stagger-tuning technique to extend the full bandwidth from 3.1 to 10.6 GHz. A current-reused architecture is employed to decrease the power consumption. By using an input common-gate stage, the input resistance of 50 Ω can be obtained without an extra input-matching network. The output matching is achieved by cascading an output common-drain stage. FB-LNA was implemented with a TSMC 0.18-μm CMOS process. On-wafer measurement shows an average power gain of 9.7 dB within the full operation band. The input reflection coefficient and the output reflection coefficient are both less than -10 dB over the entire band. The noise figure of the full band remained under 7 dB with a minimum value of 5.27 dB. The linearity of input third-order intercept point is -2.23 dBm. The power consumptions at 1.5-V supply voltage without an output buffer is 4.5 mW. The chip area occupies 1.17 × 0.88 mm2.

[1]  Yong Lian,et al.  1 V, 0.18 μm-area and power efficient UWB LNA utilising active inductors , 2008 .

[2]  A. Bevilacqua,et al.  An ultra-wideband CMOS LNA for 3.1 to 10.6 GHz wireless receivers , 2004, 2004 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (IEEE Cat. No.04CH37519).

[3]  Chien-Nan Kuo,et al.  3 similar to 11-GHz CMOS UWB LNA using dual feedback for broadband matching , 2006, RFIC 2006.

[4]  A. Neviani,et al.  A fully integrated differential CMOS LNA for 3-5-GHz ultrawideband wireless receivers , 2006, IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters.

[5]  Songcheol Hong,et al.  A Low-Noise Amplifier With Tunable Interference Rejection for 3.1- to 10.6-GHz UWB Systems , 2010, IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters.

[6]  Sang-Gug Lee,et al.  An ultra-wideband CMOS low noise amplifier for 3-5-GHz UWB system , 2005, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[7]  Sang-Gug Lee,et al.  Design of Full Band UWB Common-Gate LNA , 2007, IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters.

[8]  Ranjit Gharpurey.  A broadband low-noise front-end amplifier for ultra wideband in 0.13 μm CMOS , 2004, CICC.

[9]  Kong-Pang Pun,et al.  A 1.2V, 1.8 GHz CMOS two-stage LNA with common-gate amplifier as an input stage , 2003, ASICON 2003.

[10]  Shen-Iuan Liu,et al.  A Broadband Noise-Canceling CMOS LNA for 3.1–10.6-GHz UWB Receivers , 2007, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[11]  K. Aufinger,et al.  15 GHz wideband amplifier with 2.8 dB noise figure in SiGe bipolar technology , 2001, 2001 IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Sympsoium Digest (Cat. No.01CH37157).

[12]  Po-Cheng Lin,et al.  A 1.5-V Low-Power Common-Gate Low Noise Amplifier for Ultrawideband Receivers , 2007, 2007 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems.

[13]  B. Nauta,et al.  Wide-band CMOS low-noise amplifier exploiting thermal noise canceling , 2004, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[14]  Kuo-Liang Deng,et al.  A 0.5-14-GHz 10.6-dB CMOS cascode distributed amplifier , 2003, 2003 Symposium on VLSI Circuits. Digest of Technical Papers (IEEE Cat. No.03CH37408).

[15]  P. Kinget,et al.  Low power programmable-gain CMOS distributed LNA for ultra-wideband applications , 2005, Digest of Technical Papers. 2005 Symposium on VLSI Circuits, 2005..

[16]  R. Gharpurey.  A broadband low-noise front-end amplifier for ultra wideband in 0.13-/spl mu/m CMOS , 2004, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[17]  Y.-S. Lin,et al.  2.5 dB NF 3.1-10.6 GHz CMOS UWB LNA with small group-delay variation , 2008 .

[18]  Jin-Fa Chang,et al.  3-10 GHz low-power, low-noise CMOS distributed amplifier using splitting-load inductive peaking and noise-suppression techniques , 2009 .

[19]  Yeo Kiat Seng,et al.  A 3–8 GHz Low-Noise CMOS Amplifier , 2009, IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters.

[20]  C. Fu,et al.  3/spl sim/11-GHz CMOS UWB LNA using dual feedback for broadband matching , 2006, IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits (RFIC) Symposium, 2006.

[21]  Yang Lu,et al.  A novel CMOS low-noise amplifier design for 3.1- to 10.6-GHz ultra-wide-band wireless receivers , 2006, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers.