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Gain Compression Improvement on Low-Power Cascaded Current Reuse LNAs

Pereira, M. ; Vaz, J. ; Leme, C.A. ; Costa Freire, J.

International Journal of Circuit Theory and Applications Vol. 44, Nº 10, pp. 1767 - 1779, October, 2016.

ISSN (print): 0098-9886
ISSN (online): 1097-007X

Scimago Journal Ranking: 0,35 (in 2016)

Digital Object Identifier: 10.1002/cta.2191

Abstract
Current reuse low-noise-amplifiers (CRLNAs) have been the norm to achieve high-gain and low noise figure under low power budgets. However, conventional CRLNAs suffer from a severe lack of large-signal linearity, especially in conventional cascaded CRLNAs. This main drawback is related with the typical biasing method imposed in the output stage. To prove our point, a large-signal study is performed for a single stage common-source (CS) in two distinct biasing situations: voltage biased and current biased. On the basis of the gathered results, a new CRLNA solution is proposed to relief the large-signal bottleneck. The suggested design is analyzed in a 0.13 µm CMOS standard process. Post-layout simulations show 8 dB compression point improvement compared with the conventional CRLNA solution. The CRLNA draws a current of 650 µA from a 1.2 V supply. At 2.45 GHz, a power gain of 25.3 dB and a NF of 2.3 dB are achieved, while the IIP3 is -9 dBm.