Low-power ultra-wideband LNA employing CS–CD current-reuse and gain-controller resistor technique in 0.180-μm CMOS technology

Abstract

In this paper, a low-power ultra-wideband low noise amplifier (LNA) is presented. The combination of dual resonance network and current-bleeding technique offers high and flat voltage gain and low noise figure (NF), and also, the gain-controller resistor technique causes better control of voltage gain to achieve flatter gain. Furthermore, the CS–CD (Common-Source Common-Drain) current-reuse technique provides output return loss reduction and eliminates buffer stage in LNA design. It has been shown that using this scheme, noticeable improvement has been obtained in the frequency range of 2–11 GHz. This improvement consists of minimum noise figure value as 2.5 dB, the maximum value of 4.2 dB and average noise figure lower than 3 dB in a wide frequency range, from 4 to 10 GHz. The proposed LNA achieves the average voltage gain of 12.35 dB with a variation of 0.85 dB in the frequency range of 2–11 GHz. Input and output return losses are below − 10 dB and IIP3 of the proposed structure is − 3 dBm. The proposed LNA consumes 9.52 mW in 1-V supply voltage. Moreover, the size of the structure is 0.54 mm2 in TSMC 180-nm technology.