A 1.5-v 2-9.6-GHz inductorless low-noise amplifier in 0.13-μm CMOS

This paper presents an inductors low-noise amplifier (LNA) design for an ultra-wideband (UWB) receiver frontend. A current-reuse gain-enhanced noise canceling architecture is proposed, and the properties and limitations of the gainenhancement stage are discussed. Capacitive peaking is employed to improve the gain flatness and -3-dB bandwidth, at the cost of absolute gain value. The LNA circuit is fabricated in a 0.13-mu m triple-well CMOS technology. Measurement result shows that a small-signal gain of 11 dB and a -3-dB bandwidth of 2-9.6 GHz are obtained. Over the -3-dB bandwidth, the input return loss is less than -8.3 dB, and the noise figure is 3.6-4.8 dB. The LNA consumes 19 mW from a low supply voltage of 1.5 V. It is shown that the LNA designed without on-chip inductors achieves comparable performances with inductor-based designs. The silicon area is reduced significantly in the inductorless design, the LNA core occupies only 0.05 mm(2), which is among the smallest reported designs.