Low-noise and high-gain wideband LNA with gm-boosting technique

Abstract

A broadband low-noise amplifier (LNA) is proposed. The active gmboosting technique is utilised to reduce the common-gate (CG) LNA noise figure and improve gain. An implemented prototype using 0.13 μm CMOS technology is evaluated using on-wafer probing. S11 and S22 are below - 10 dB across 0.1-5 GHz. Measurements show a power gain of 18.3 dB with a - 3 dB bandwidth from 100 MHz to 2.1 GHz and an IIP3 of - 7 dBm at 2 GHz. The measured noise figure is better than 2.5 dB below 2.1 GHz, better than 4.5 dB below 5 GHz and at 500 MHz it obtains its minimum value 1.8 dB. The LNA consumes 14 mW from 1.5 V supply and occupies an area of 0.04 mm2. © The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2013.