A low supply voltage SiGe LNA for ultra-wideband frontends

Author

Barras, D. ; Ellinger, F. ; Jackel, H. ; Hirt, W.

Author_Institution

Electron. Lab., Swiss Fed. Inst. of Technol., Zurich, Switzerland

Volume

14

Issue

10

fYear

2004

Firstpage

469

Lastpage

471

Abstract

A low-power low-noise amplifier (LNA) for ultra-wideband (UWB) radio systems is presented. The microwave monolithic integrated circuit (MMIC) has been fabricated using a commercial 0.25-μm silicon-germanium (SiGe) bipolar CMOS (BiCMOS) technology. The amplifier uses peaking and feedback techniques to optimize its gain, bandwidth and impedance matching. It operates from 3.4 to 6.9GHz, which corresponds with the low end of the available UWB radio spectrum. The LNA has a peak gain of 10dB and a noise figure less than 5dB over the entire bandwidth. The circuit consumes only 3.5mW using a 1-V supply voltage. A figure of merit (FoM) for LNAs considering bandwidth, gain, noise, power consumption, and technology is proposed. The realized LNA circuit is compared with other recently published low-power LNA designs and shows the highest reported FoM.

Keywords

BiCMOS integrated circuits; Ge-Si alloys; MMIC; amplifiers; feedback; low-power electronics; 0.25 micron; 1 V; 10 dB; 3.4 to 6.9 GHz; 3.5 mW; SiGe; bipolar CMOS; feedback techniques; figure of merit; low supply voltage; low-power low-noise amplifier; microwave monolithic integrated circuit; peaking techniques; ultra-wideband frontends; Bandwidth; CMOS technology; Germanium silicon alloys; Low voltage; Low-noise amplifiers; MMICs; Monolithic integrated circuits; Noise figure; Silicon germanium; Ultra wideband technology;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Microwave and Wireless Components Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1531-1309

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LMWC.2004.834556

Filename

1339294