An Inductorless Low-Noise Amplifier with Noise Cancellation for UWB Receiver Front-End

Abstract

An inductorless low-noise amplifier (LNA) design for ultra-wideband (UWB) receiver front-end is presented. Without on-chip inductors, the ultra-wide bandwidth is achieved by a syncretic adoption of thermal noise canceling, capacitor peaking, and current reuse. Fabricated in a 0.13-mum CMOS technology, the LNA exhibits a small signal gain of 11-dB and a -3-d 15 bandwidth of 2-9.6-GHz. The input return loss is less than -9.5-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. The LNA circuit with pad occupies only 0.17 mm2 die area, which is among the smallest reported designs.