A wideband CMOS variable gain amplifier with an exponential gain control

A CMOS wideband cascaded variable gain amplifier (VGA) with a temperature-independent exponential gain control characteristic is presented in this paper. The exponential gain control function is realized using parasitic bipolar transistors and a control signal converter. The bandwidth is extended using an inductive peaking technique for high-frequency operations. The gain of the VGA varies from -38.8 to 55.3 dB in relation to the control voltage that varies from 0 to 1.8 V. The bandwidth of the proposed VGA is approximately 900 MHz with a gain control range of 94.1 dB. The proposed VGA includes a dc offset cancellation loop to avoid amplification of the dc offset. The VGA is powered by 1.8 V with 11.4 mA. The VGA chip including bondpads occupies an area of 850 mu m x 490 mu m.