A 39 dB DR CMOS log-amp RF power detector with ±1.1 dB temperature drift from −40 to 85°C

Abstract

This paper presents a temperature compensated logarithmic amplifier (log-amp) RF power detector implemented in CMOS 0.18μm technology. The input power can range from -50 to +10 dBm for RF signals ranging from 100MHz to 1.5 GHz. This design attains a typical DR of 39 dB for a ±1 dB log-conformance error (LCE). Up to 900MHz the temperature drift is never larger than ±1.1 dB for all 24 measured samples over a temperature range from -40 to +85°C. The current consumption is 6.3mA from a 1.8V power supply and the chip area is 0.76mm2.