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A 3.1‐dB NF, 21.31 dB gain micromachined 3–10 GHz distributed amplifier for UWB systems in 0.18‐μm CMOS technology
Author(s) -
Lin YoSheng,
Chang JinFa,
Huang PenLi,
Lu SheyShi
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
microwave and optical technology letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.304
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1098-2760
pISSN - 0895-2477
DOI - 10.1002/mop.26766
Subject(s) - noise figure , cmos , cascode , transconductance , electrical engineering , amplifier , low noise amplifier , inductor , optoelectronics , microwave , materials science , engineering , electronic engineering , telecommunications , transistor , voltage
A high‐gain and low‐noise micromachined CMOS distributed amplifier (DA) using cascaded gain cell, which constitutes an inductively parallel‐peaking cascode‐stage with a low‐Q RLC load and an inductively series‐peaking common‐source stage, is demonstrated.Flat and high S 21 and flat and low noise figure (NF) are achieved simultaneously by adopting a slightly under‐damped Q‐factor for the second‐order transconductance frequency response of the proposed cascaded gain cell. The two‐stage DA consumes 37.8 mW and achieves flat and high S 21 of 20.47 ± 0.72 dB with an average NF of only 3.3 dB over the 3∼10 GHz band of interest, one of the best reported NF performances for a CMOS UWB DA or LNA in the literature. In addition, the result shows that a 0.84‐dB increase in average S 21 (from 20.47 to 21.31 dB) and a 0.2‐dB decrease (from 3.3 to 3.1 dB) in average NF are achieved mainly due to the improvement of the quality factor of the inductors in the DA. This means that this DA architecture in conjunction with the backside ICP dry‐etching technique is very promising for high‐performance 3∼10 GHz UWB communication systems. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 54:1163–1167, 2012