A novel CMOS low-noise amplifier design for 3.1-to 10.6-GHz ultra-wide-band wireless receivers

An ultra-wideband (UWB) 3.1- to 10.6-GHz low-noise amplifier (LNA) employin g a common-gate stage for wideband input matching is presented in this paper. Designed in a commercial 0.18-mu m 1.8-V standard RFCMOS technology, the proposed UWB LNA achieves fully on-chip circuit implementation, contributing to the realization of a single-hip CMOS UWB receiver. The proposed UWB LNA achieves 16.7 +/- 0.8 dB power gain with a good input match (S11 < -9 dB) over the 7500-MHz bandwidth (from 3.1 GHz to 10.6 GHz), and an average noise figure of 4.0 dB, while drawing 18.4-mA dc biasing current from the 1.8-V power supply. A gain control mechanism is also introduced for the first time in the proposed design by varying the biasing current of the gain stage without influencing the other figures of merit of the circuit so as to accommodate the UWB LNA in various UWB wireless transmission systems with different link budgets.