A 5.4–9.2 GHz 19.5 dB Complementary Metal–Oxide–Semiconductor Ultrawide-Band Receiver Front-End Low-Noise Amplifier

Abstract

In this work, we present an ultrawide-band (UWB) complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) low-noise amplifier (LNA) for wireless communication in the upper UWB band, that is, from 5.4–9.2 GHz bandwidth with a wide-band 50 Ω input matching network in front of the LNA. A three-stage cascode-topology-based LNA with high-transconductance MOS transistors, was employed to improve the voltage gain up to 23 dB at 7.5 GHz, with 4.5–9.2 GHz 3 dB bandwidth. The maximum output power S21 was 19.5 dB at 7.3 GHz, with 5.4–9.2 GHz 3 dB bandwidth. The input matching circuit was designed with a reduced number of passive elements, resulting in an input reflection coefficient S11 of less than -10 dB from 4.5–9.2 GHz. The noise figure of the LNA was as low as 3.5 dB and the input-referred third-order intercept point (IIP3) was -8 dBm. The LNA has output reflection coefficient S22 of less than -10 dB from 5–7 GHz and a good reverse isolation, that is, S12 of < -45 dB in the entire UWB, due to a cascode topology. The LNA was fabricated using 180 nm CMOS technology, which consumes 56 mW power at 1.8 V power supply. In this paper, we also demonstrate a wireless communication of 7 GHz Gaussian monocycle pulse (GMP) by horn antennas and the LNA from 20 cm transmission distance.