A High Gain and Low Noise Common Source Amplifier for Cognitive Radio Application

Cognitive radios are smart communication systems that are introduced to overcome the problem of saturated frequency spectrum in wireless communication. In this work, the design of an ultra-wideband low noise amplifier with a bandwidth of 50 MHz - 10 GHz for cognitive radio application adapting resistive feedback and p-matching is presented. The input signal is cascaded over two common-source amplifiers and shunt peaking inductors are used to improve high frequency response. In the absence of the need of any on-chip capacitor and current mirror to provide gate voltage, the proposed low noise amplifier is able to achieve smaller physical layout realization. Post layout simulation results shows that the input and output matching are better than -10 dB with a gain of 13 +/- 2 dB, noise figure of 3.01 +/- 0.54 dB and a third order intercept point ranging from -3.5 to +2.0 dBm in a frequency span from 50 MHz to 10GHz using standard CMOS 0.13 mu m platform. The physical layout occupies 0.77 mm(2) chip area with the bondpads integrated and consumes 35.4 mW of DC power from 1.2V DC supply headroom power supply.