This letter presents a 27.5–46.2-GHz broadband low-noise amplifier (LNA) featuring IP3 enhancement. The LNA bandwidth (BW) is extended by implementing dual-resonant input matching and a broadband output network. The LNA IP3 is enhanced by incorporating parallel PMOS and NMOS paths in the second stage, with their output currents combined through a three-winding transformer. Implemented using the GlobalFoundries 45-nm CMOS silicon-on insulator (SOI) process, the LNA demonstrates 27.5–46.2 GHz effective BW, 2.1 dB minimum noise figure (NF), and 19.8 dB peak gain. The measured IIP3 is − 3.6 dBm at 34 GHz under 25.5 mW DC power consumption. Compared to recently reported broadband LNAs with a similar frequency range, this design achieves the state-of-the-art NF, IIP3, and figure-of-merit (FoM).
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A Continually-Stepped Variable-Gain LNA in 65-nm CMOS Enabled by a Tunable-Transformer for mm-Wave 5G Communications
This paper presents a new continually-stepped variable gain low-noise-amplifier (CSVG-LNA) for millimeter-wave (mm-wave) 5G communications. The proposed variable-gain functionality in a two-stage LNA is achieved by incorporating a tunable-transformer at the 2nd-stage. The tunability in coupling-coefficient of the transformer allows to change the output matching of the LNA in a continuous fashion thus enabling a design of CSVG-LNA. The proposed CSVG-LNA alleviates high power consumption and large noise-figure (NF) variation problems in traditional approaches. To validate the proposed idea, we fabricated a CSVG-LNA in 65-nm CMOS process. The CSVG-LNA achieves measured 6.2dB of gain-tunability range while producing 18.2dB of peak S21 and <;4.1dB of NF 28GHz. Further, the NF variation is only ~0.2dB across the entire 6.2dB gain-tuning range. The 3dB bandwidth of CSVG-LNA is about 12GHz (22-34GHz) while it consumes only 9.8mW of dc power. The CSVG-LNA occupies a compact core area of 0.2mm2. The proposed CSVG-LNA achieves 1.5X improvement in FoM in comparison to state-of-the-arts mm-wave variable-gain CMOS LNAs.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1705026
- PAR ID:
- 10146892
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- 2019 IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium (IMS)
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 926 to 929
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1109/MWSYM.2019.8701023
