Figure of merit for narrowband, wideband and multiband LNAs

In software defined radio, the same radio front end is used to accommodate different wireless standards operating in different frequency bands. The use of wideband or multiband low noise amplifiers (LNAs) is mandatory in such situations. There are several figures of merit (FoMs) proposed for narrowband LNAs. These FoMs are modified for wideband/multiband LNAs just by the inclusion of 3 dB bandwidth, and designers tend to use the one that favours their own design. In this article, a review of the existing FoMs for narrowband LNAs is presented. Based on this analysis, we propose two different FoMs for fair comparison of improvement in LNA parameters due to complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology advancement and circuit optimisation (irrespective of transistor technology), separately. The empirical technology scaling factor for gain, noise figure (NF), f T and linearity is used to differentiate between these FoMs for different types of LNAs.

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